World's richest man Carlos Slim slams broadband plan

Mexican telco tycoon Carlos Slim has hit out at the National Broadband Network during a press conference in Sydney

THE world's richest man Carlos Slim has slammed the Government's national broadband network, branding it "too expensive".

Mr Slim, speaking at the Forbes conference in Sydney, told a press conference that the $42 billion plan to install the NBN is simply going to cost too much.

"It's too much money," he said.

"It is not necessary to invest so much money, because technology is changing all the time."

Mr Slim said that $7000 a home to connect around six million homes was too high a cost.

He also criticised the reliance of the project on fibre.

"You need to have a multi platform of everything; mobile, landline, fibre, cable and copper," he said.

"You need to have all these. You need to have a very good fibre network and rings and you need to have a loop of fibre to sustain when you have a problem in one place that the communications don’t get interrupted.

"But with copper and cable you can give 20 or 30 MhZ. I think fibre is not enough. You need to have a good network of wireless. "

But Mr Slim, who made much of his $US60 billion fortune from telecommunications in is native Mexico, came to the defence of beleagured telco Telstra, describing it as a "good company'.

Source http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/worlds-richest-man-carlos-slim-slams-broadband-plan/story-e6frf7jo-1225931844361