Australia-Taking Broadband to Outback Farms.
AUSTRALIA-NEW CANADIAN PLAYER ON THE GROUND.
Art Price has made a career of defying convention - as an energy pioneer, agri-food executive and member of one of Alberta’s most adventurous business families. Now the maverick entrepreneur is poised to step onto a broader stage, as a global technology visionary.
Within the next few weeks, the Australian government will decide whether his Calgary company, Axia NetMedia Corp., is part of the consortium that will build a potential $8.5-billion national broadband network.
"Australia is a large opportunity for Axia," says Mr. Price, 57, founder, chairman and chief executive officer.
If it participates in the Australian contract - and the thinking is it will win at least part of the action - Axia could contend for the label of Canadian champion, as a niche player in the global big leagues of communications networks
Even the harsh economic winds may provide a push for Axia. Broadband networks are an ideal stimulus investment, Mr. Price argues, because, unlike old-economy roads and bridges, governments can claim to be buying a piece of the technological future.
It is hard to think of a future global powerhouse trading under $2 a share on the Toronto Stock Exchange. But Axia has been a compelling story since emerging more than a decade ago as operator of Alberta SuperNet, a broadband network serving the province’s rural centres.
Building on that experience, it has gained a role in Singapore’s plan to be the first major city to take optical fibre networks to every home - and is bidding to be part of a second contract for the electronic overlay to that network.
It is involved in launching 13 regional networks in France, and is making progress in the United States, where it aims to capitalize on Barack Obama’s massive stimulus investment in infrastructure.
A win in Australia would bolster Mr. Price’s reputation as an outside-the-box thinker who brings new models to established sectors where incumbents cling to traditional cash cows. "I’m a ’willing to take the challenge’ person," he says.
As president of Husky Oil Ltd. in the 1980s and early 1990s, he defied industry thinking by spearheading a $1.6-billion heavy oil upgrader in Lloydminster, on the Alberta-Saskatchewan border. Built with heavy government assistance, it was a precursor of unconventional projects that powered the now-dormant energy boom of the past decade.
"These network projects are the upgraders over and over again," Mr. Price says. Once again, he is challenging accepted views, working with newly minted public policy and providing execution support to governments pushing beyond the status quo.
The success at Husky fed into everything that followed. "If I hadn’t been able to do the upgrader, I wouldn’t be trying to do these things," he says.
In Australia, as in other jurisdictions, Axia presents itself as the objective outsider with no conflicts of interest and no ties to old technology or established players in the country’s communications markets.
"That’s the banner that they are holding as they go out in the world," says Peter Prattas, an analyst with Toronto investment dealer Fraser Mackenzie. "They are the independent non-conflicted third party providing the very basic network infrastructure."
This approach goes over well in Australia, where there is widespread resentment toward Telstra, the country’s major telecom carrier. Telstra was eliminated from the national bidding process after handing in a bizarrely deficient application.
"It is well within the realm of possibility that Axia could be awarded this contract," says Joshua Gans, a professor at Melbourne Business School who follows the information industry. "It has experience in actually building these sorts of things, and they may be able to trump others on that basis."
Most likely, Axia will be a participant in the national network while local bidders fill in other components. Prof. Gans says Telstra has been playing politics, assuming that the government would have to come to it, and it is likely Telstra will play some role.
Axia itself is coming under increasing scrutiny, as critics question whether it is big enough to raise a lot of money in the middle of a credit crunch. Mr. Price agrees financing is a challenge in this climate, as it would be for any contender, even a giant such as Telstra. Australia, as part of the governing Labor Party’s election pledge, is committed to put up $4-billion - and the private financing could be about the same amount.
For Mr. Price, it is a long road from Acme, Alta., where he was one of seven children in a farm family that branched out from raising prize pigs into beef and pork.
