Former NBN Co boss Mike Quigley warns Government review not to rewrite history

Updated

The former head of the National Broadband Network has warned the new management team not to rewrite history in its review of the NBN.

Mike Quigley was chief executive of NBN Co, the company rolling out the network, between 2009 and his retirement in October this year.

His replacement, former Telstra chief executive Ziggy Switkowski, is in the middle of a strategic review of the entire company.

It is investigating the viability of the former Labor government's fibre to the premise (FttP) approach.

The Coalition's fibre to the node (FttN) alternative takes the fibre to street cabinets and then uses the legacy copper network for the last link to the home.

FttP provides ultimately faster speeds, although an FttN network would be cheaper and completed faster.

Last week, Mr Switkowski conceded meeting the Government's 2016 target was likely to be a challenge.



Mr Quigley told a Telecommunications Society forum in Sydney that the new management had no time to lose.

"Don't waste your time being party to a rewriting of the FttP business case using nonsensical assumptions being made to prove a predetermined outcome," he said.

He says there is a risk in underestimating the demand for higher speeds.

"We can build an FttP network or an FttN network - there are risks either way," he said.

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"You can run the risk of building more than Australians want or need in the future, or less than they want or need in the future.

"That latter risk exists because an FttN network cannot be easily upgraded to FttP in an NBN environment."

During Mr Quigley's time in charge, the network faced difficulties with missed forecasts but he made no apologies for the ambitious targets.

"This wasn't a project where hedging our bets, sandbagging and conservatism was going to work," he said.

"The NBN Co management team was not naively optimistic, but collectively had a good deal of experience in building large telco networks.

"Did we think it was likely that we were going to hit all of the targets we set ourselves, given the complexity and scale of the project, and a number of issues that were beyond our control?

"Of course we didn't."

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Topics: information-and-communication, internet-technology, federal-government, business-economics-and-finance, australia

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