Britain’s David Millar woke in a “dark and angry mood” this morning - but finished the day celebrating a podium finish after landing the polka dot jersey in the first stage of the Tour de France.

Millar set the pace for three-quarters of the 207 kilometre route from Tower Bridge to Canterbury - and at one stage opened a six-minute advantage on the peloton. As the gap eventually closed and it became clear the stage would be decided on a sprint finish, Millar turned his attention to landing the polka dot jersey - awarded to the ‘king of the mountains’.

There are not too many of those in Kent, but Millar earned five points from the three categorised climbs through the North Downs and described the achievement as one of the biggest in his career. Millar’s efforts lifted him from 13th to third in the overall standings - while Switzerland’s Fabian Cancellara, who won the prologue in London yesterday, retained the leader’s yellow jersey.

The stage win went to Australian Robbie McEwen, who stormed to the front in a thrilling sprint finish after recovering from a serious crash with 22km to go.

Millar has been struggling for confidence and admitted on Friday he was entering the Tour “riddled with self doubt”. But after finishing 13th in the prologue, he was determined to mark the unique occasion of the Grand Depart coming to British soil by standing on the podium. “I was in a dark and angry mood this morning and felt like I wanted to do something. I thought ‘you know what, I’m going to go on a suicide mission’. And it ended up being productive,” said Millar, whose only other polka dot jersey came in the 1999 Tour of Valencia. “I under-estimated how overwhelmed I was yesterday (when a million people lined the streets of London for the prologue).

“Even this morning, with all the people, it was starting to stress me out. I only got really happy when I was on the bike in the race.

“I really enjoyed it out on the road - but I can’t handle all that stuff around it. I don’t know how the Beckhams deal with it!

“Today I was at my tactical best. I chose the time to attack at the beginning perfectly. Everything I did was planned out. Even when I dropped off a break late on, it was to guarantee I got this jersey. You only get one opportunity in your life to do something like that.”

Millar was touched by the support he received the length of the route, particularly given his past. The Scot was banned for two years between 2004-2006 after admitting to use of the blood-boosting steroid EPO.

“It has been amazing. There were flags, and everyone was shouting my name - and it was nice to hear it in an English accent!” he laughed.

Britain’s big hope in the sprint finish was T-Mobile’s Mark Cavendish - but his chances were dashed by a crash 25km from home.

“It happened when I was coming up the climb. There was a big group of spectators at the side of the road. The next thing I know I’m on the floor. The bike was trashed,” he said. Cavendish was furious. He needed to change bikes twice, and team officials in the support car had to urge the 21-year-old Tour debutant to calm down.

The decision was that Cavendish was too far back to catch the peloton, and T-Mobile wanted him to channel his obvious anger and frustration into tomorrow’s stage from Dunkirk. “Sure, he was angry. This was a big dream for him to come here and win a stage on his home turf,” said Cavendish’s T-Mobile boss Bob Stapleton.

“But that was his first hand of cards. He will be around for a few more hands in this race. He is better off spending that energy tomorrow than in a desperate attempt to get back into the race today”.

While Cavendish had been left on his own at the back of the pack, McEwen was with his team Predictor Lotto team-mates when he fell - and they helped him get back into the race. The Australian sprint specialist feared he had broken his wrist when he went down and struggled to grip the handlebars. But he surged through the peloton with a stunning final 300m to secure a famous victory.

“I don’t know how I did it, mate,” he said on the finish line, his right hand purple and swollen.

“It’s unbelievable. It hurts everywhere. I did not think I had a chance in the sprint - but I found the energy in the anger and frustration. I had really prepared well for the Tour and felt I had lost it in one moment.”

QANTAS has flagged the possibility of establishing long-haul operations through its two Asian budget franchises Singapore’s Jetstar Asia and Vietnam’s Pacific Airlines to complement the already aggressive international expansion of Jetstar.

The carrier’s ambitious plans were further illustrated at the weekend, when Qantas became the largest airline customer for the Boeing 787 Dreamliner.

On the eve of Boeing’s first showing of a fully assembled 787 at its factory near Seattle, at a ceremony to be held this morning Australian time, Qantas lifted its order from 45 to 65 jets. It also hinted that most of the planes could end up in the Jetstar fleet.

Qantas chief executive Geoff Dixon said the aircraft’s fuel efficiency would allow Qantas and Jetstar to “expand more rapidly, particularly in the Asia-Pacific, the world’s fastest growing aviation region”.

The first 15 787-800s Qantas will receive from mid-2008 will go into the Jetstar fleet. It is yet to decide where it will deploy the longer-range 787-900s that it will take delivery of from 2010. Qantas also called on Boeing to expedite development of the jet’s stretched version, the 787-10.

Asked where Jetstar could expand its services, Mr Dixon said: “There’s a chance of Jetstar going anywhere. You have a carrier that has absolutely established itself well in its costs base and the way it operates.”

He also rejected speculation that Qantas could eventually lease planes from Jetstar to cut costs and side-step labour deals with higher paid Qantas crews.

Qantas chief financial officer Peter Gregg, who joined Mr Dixon at the press conference, said Jetstar Asia and Pacific Airlines could possibly take on the Airbus A330-200s in Jetstar’s fleet that the 787 will replace.

“The options for us to put wide-bodies into those vehicles are growing by the day,” Mr Gregg said. Such a move could be seen as an attempt to ward off the threat posed by low-cost Asian airlines such as Malaysia’s AirAsia looking to launch long-haul services into Australia.

Qantas bought a 30 per cent stake in Pacific Airlines from the Vietnam Government two months ago.

Qantas’s gamble on the 787 and Airbus A380 super-jumbo of which it is the second largest buyer appears to have paid off. Despite the wrappers not coming off the 787 until this morning near Seattle, Boeing has already sold more than 660 of the jets, making it the most successful launch of a new commercial airliner in history. Airlines now wanting one of the fuel-efficient jets will have to wait until 2013.

“One of the great advantages and one of the positions that Qantas has established for itself is this order we have for the 787,” Mr Dixon said.

“You really can’t get into this game at the moment.”

Mr Gregg and Mr Dixon also signalled that Qantas’s recent aircraft buying binge could continue, with the airline now looking to replace its ageing fleet of 747-400 jumbo jets and even look at a short-haul jet that could be used for its entire Qantas and Jetstar fleet.

THE Optus-Elders Opel consortium plan to wire up rural, regional and remote Australia will not deliver to the entire population outside the capital cities, an expert has warned.

Peter Moon, chairman and chief executive of Horizon Broadband Communications, also said the consortium’s plans to use the unlicensed 5.8 gigahertz spectrum was unworkable and was likely to turn the network into a sinkhole of public money.

He said the Opel promise of ADSL2 and wireless broadband using WiMAX would only serve a fraction of the 500,000 rural and remote households in the target market.

“I don’t think the business case stacks up,” Mr Moon said. “The knowledge that we have of that unlicensed 5.8 GHz WiMAX system is that it will only service 130,000 customers across their 1300-odd transmitter towers.”

“What’s being delivered is not, and cannot, be a next-generation future-proof network because the architecture is wrong; the chosen spectrum space is wrong.”

Horizon is a research and development business operating from the University of Ballarat’s technology park. It also operates in Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra and Adelaide.

Because the spectrum Opel plans to use is unlicensed, anyone who wishes to use the frequency can do so. However, Opel has indicated that that is unlikely to happen as this spectrum is little used in the bush.

But Mr Moon said this cheaper spectrum was inferior and would leave the network vulnerable to interference and bad connections.

“The unlicensed spectrum in Australia is not the spectrum you should be using for regional, rural and remote wireless connection because it doesn’t have the capacity to go long distances,” Mr Moon said.

“And being unlicensed, it’s fraught with all sorts of contention and interference issues. The only spectrum really to be used for regional, rural and remote Australia is licensed spectrum.”

He said both the Federal Government and Federal Opposition and the big telcos were obsessed with fibre-to-the-node when the spectrum was more ideally suited for a fourth-generation wireless broadband network. With signals that were robust and able to travel at extremely high speeds, it would provide the kind of network that could turn Australia into a global telecommunications leader.

The alternative of fibre-to-the-node on the other hand would be costly and inefficient, with its embedded infrastructure and sunk dollars.

He said Communication Minister Helen Coonan’s special panel set up to create the framework for a tender to build an urban fibre-to-the-node network had only one chance to get it right.

“We’ve probably only got one more chance in this country to actually create a separate alternate virtual pipe. No one has the money in this country to go and dig holes and plough in cable across this country.”

He said the network could work perfectly well using the existing infrastructure, including the towers set up around Australia.

The infrastructure of power companies in every state could play a critical role.

An Optus spokeswoman said there would be no problems with the Opel roll-out. “WiMAX is well suited for the delivery of high-speed broadband across large geographic areas, making it well suited for low-density populations like Australia,” the spokeswoman said.

“WiMAX has been widely deployed across locations in Europe, rural USA and Canada to deliver both residential and business broadband services.”