States picking up Conroy's broadband slack?

Now Iemma's announcement by itself would have been enough to keep the Australian telecommunications industry speculating about its implications for several weeks. But the fun didn't stop there.

On the same day, Western Australia Premier Alan Carpenter flagged plans to pool his own state government's annual AU$100 million telecomms spend into a billion dollar contract to build a state-wide broadband network.

And even Queensland Premier Peter Beattie got in on the action, with the state commencing a search for partners to build a broadband network in Brisbane.

Now they say that good news comes in threes, but most journalists would start to smell a rat when three Labor state governments simultaneously announce massive broadband plans within the space of 24 hours. The three premiers have also aired their respective plans at a time when broadband has become very much an issue on the national agenda.

Federal (Liberal) Communications Minister Helen Coonan has been hitting the airwaves a lot of late to plug the success her government has had in delivering broadband to the bandwidth-starved masses.

At the same time, Coonan's Labor opposite Senator Stephen Conroy has been surprisingly ineffectual at getting his own message across.

In one memorable occasion in March of this year, not a single member of the audience wanted to ask a question about Labor's policy platform after Conroy spoke at one of the nation's largest telecommunications conferences.

Coonan, in contrast, was in hot demand after she spoke before Conroy.

Could it be that the Labor premiers are now throwing their hats into the ring to ensure their own governments aren't looking weak in the face of Liberal leadership on broadband?

Certainly some ZDNet Australia readers reacted cynically to the states' moves. "How did such a vote-swinging idea get missed in the Vic election?" wrote one in the wake of Iemma's announcement.

Iemma's team no doubt feels it likely broadband will be an issue at NSW's upcoming state election in March 2007.

Are the states trying to provide leadership on broadband to make up for an ineffectual national shadow communications Minister? Drop me a line directly at renai.lemay@zdnet.com.au or post your opinion below this article.