Govt calls for bush broadband proposals

The move is a formalisation of Coonan's plans to use chunks of the government's AU$878 million Broadband Connect package to fund new broadband networks in regional Australia.

Such funds had previously been allocated on a per-customer basis under the old Higher Bandwidth Incentive Scheme (HiBIS).

Since Coonan made her plans public several consortia of telcos have formed to try to attract the funding.

The so-called "Expressions of Interest" (EOI) documents detailing the government's requirements for proposals can be downloaded here.

"The EOI puts forward likely assessment criteria that would apply under an alternative funding approach, with commercial viability and future scalability to higher speed services to be major considerations," said a statement issued by the minister today.

"Consistent with the government's pro-competitive approach to telecommunications, the EO also discussed the need for fair and reasonable wholesale access arrangements to enable competition at the regional level."

Interested parties will need to respond to the EOI by July 14.

The minister has also released revised guidelines for the existing, per-customer type of funding arrangements under the Broadband Connect package. The guidelines are available here.