From the AFR:
Former NBN Co chief Mike Quigley has urged new executive chairman Ziggy Switkowski to bypass planned reviews of the national broadband network, warning they will further delay construction with little gain. In his first public appearance since leaving the government-owned company in September, Mr Quigley defended his four-year record leading Labor’s $37.4 billion fibre rollout and said he had “no doubt” the company would be more successful with bipartisan political support. However, he blamed “deliberate efforts to impede the progress” due to attacks from the Coalition while in opposition that he said created obstacles for the project. “If I can offer some advice to the new management of NBN Co I would say even with all the work that’s been done … and the fact you have a fully functioning company at your disposal, you do not have a minute to lose,” he said. “Don’t waste your time being party to a rewriting of the FTTP business case using nonsensical assumptions aimed to prove a pre-determined outcome that will only further politicise the project and ultimately delay it.”
There is some irony in Mike Quigley attacking NBN delays. His own tenure at the firm saw repeatedly downgraded targets missed, though it’s certainly the case that politics played its part, not least the decision to role out cable in the least populated areas first, to placate independents. But it’s hard not to feel some frustration at the Coalition’s efforts to retrofit the plan with analysis that should have been conducted before the project started and the plans to revert to Telstra copper wire are a lot like unscrambling an egg:
Former NBN Co executives urged the incoming Coalition government to rent, rather than buy, Telstra’s copper network as part of a plan to change the national broadband network rollout. An analysis of the Coalition’s broadband policy by the company, and obtained by Fairfax Media, warned it could be saddled with more than $1 billion in annual maintenance costs and face millions more in technology upgrades if it took control of the existing copper network.
But if the Government leaves it with Telstra, the same costs will be passed on anyway in the service agreement. Not that we’re going to know:
…Revelations of the analysis come as NBN Co’s new management, led by Dr Switkowski, submitted a draft version of its anticipated strategic review to the government on Monday….It is expected the plan will include, among other recommendations, a push to increase the extent to which the copper network beyond the Coalition’s initial plans. However, parts of the review are likely to remain confidential due to commercial information and a spokesman for Mr Turnbull was unable to say when the review would be released, if at all.
At the end of the day, both sides of politics are going to make this project far less effective and more costly than it should have been.
