[LINK] Telstra's at it again

[Michael Skeggs mike@bystander.net]

I haven't seen the tender document, but all government procurement
documents I've seen are careful to reserve their right to buy from
none of the responders, or from a supplier who did not respond. While
it is true that issuing the request as a tender would give Terria et
al. some legs to cry foul if Telstra ended up supplying services
largely within the specs of the bid document, I expect you would see
some legal challenges, but it is far from a case of the Telstra
non-compliant response being automatically out of consideration.
Conversely, Telstra has lost some ground to challenge the decision if
it does go to Terria or one of the others, they have chosen to
effectively not participate.
Some of the lawyers on the list might want to weigh in, but the govt
could, for example, choose a bid substantially more expensive than
Telstra's non-compliant response, and Telstra would have little
recourse to say such a choice was unfair.
My guess, is that Telstra is ultimately seeking to derail the current
NBN process and will pressure for a revised, more modestly scoped
tender to replace it.
If the Terria guys lack a realistic funding model, they might get it too.
Regards,
Michael Skeggs

2008/11/26 Jan Whitaker <jwhit at melbpc.org.au>:
> At 08:39 PM 26/11/2008, David Boxall wrote:
>>Telstra has not submitted a complete bid.  By all rights, it's thus
>>ineligible.  Does our government have the courage to walk away from our
>>dominant telco?
>
> If you listened to Conroy, he was very careful in what he said, that
> the Telstra submission would be considered in the same way as all
> others. If I was on that review panel, and they didn't meet the RFP
> criteria, they would go in the rubbish bin. Otherwise the contractual
> selection is flawed and open to challenge by the other bidders who
> did comply with the process. That seems pretty simple to me, and I'm
> sure the other players are no dummies in that regard, either.
>
> Jan
>
>
>
> Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
> jwhit at janwhitaker.com
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