SingTel-Optus boss Paul O’Sullivan says he will not sit idly by and allow the National Broadband Network to be hijacked by Telstra to gain an unfair advantage.
The Federal Government and NBN Co are locked in to a series of reviews that are critical to the NBN’s structure and technology. Canberra is also renegotiating Labor’s $11 billion deal with Telstra which could hand back management control of various assets to the telco.
O’Sullivan has pledged to become reasingly vocal over the next 12 months in an effort to lobby the government.
“For us the NBN is not about building a network it’s about a fundamental opening +of fixed line competition” he told the Australian Financial Review. “Therefore we’re going to be very vigilant and very forceful in expressing our consistent view that the NBN must be a wholesale-only network.”
O’Sullivan also attacked TPG Telecom which plans to compete with the NBN by building a “cherry-picking:” fibre to the basement network in major cities.
“There must be no involvement in the NBN at the wholesale level by any retail competitor and all retail players should get access to the NBN on equivalent and equal terms” he said. “Anybody who builds networks should live by the same rules and understand there has to be separation and open access.”
