Australia's NBN Picks First Partners, Issues More RFPs

NBN Co Limited (NBN Co), the consortium established to design, build and operate Australia's forthcoming wholesale-only National Broadband Network (NBN), selected three key technology partners: IBM, Oracle and Accenture.


IBM was selected for infrastructure hosting, which consists of acquiring servers, storage, operating systems, Oracle for the software platform. Accenture was picked for implementation and ongoing support services.


Portland Group provided procurement support to NBN Co for the process of selection. The contracts with IBM, Oracle and Accenture total $23 million over three years. NBN Co issued the Request for Proposal for these contracts in December 2009.


Separately, NBN Co. issued a Request for Capability Statement (RCS) seeking suitably qualified companies, joint ventures or consortia to provide design and construction services for the progressive rollout of the Fibre Access Network to 90% of Australian premises. Potential construction partners will need to show they have the capability and capacity to design and deliver telecommunications infrastructure projects of significant size and complexity. Submissions are due by 27-April-2010.
http://www.nbnco.com.au