Ziggy Switkowski appointed NBN Co executive chair As widely predicted, Australia's new communications minister Malcolm Turnbull has appointed Doctor Ziggy Switkowski as executive chair of NBN Co, the entity charged with building the nation's national broadband network (NBN). The appointment and the title of executive chair means Switkowski is now the leader of NBN Co, as its …
When you consider that in April 2013, 47% of connections on fibre were 12Mbps, and the trend was upwards. The LNP plan is highly likely to deliver faster speeds for more people at a cheaper price. For those who need fast speeds, fibre on demand will be available.
The Labor party managed to turn the abundance of fibre into a scarcity and would have seen Australia comparatively go backwards.
Ziggy is a safe option, but past history suggests that will lead to a mediocre network.
This guy will pour treacle over the NBN like he did to Telstra when he ran it, everything was slow and sticky, nothing ran smoothly. Staff hated him, he lhas no sense of vision or purpose.
This purely a political appointment like when he was appointed to Telstra..... that was by the conservatives too, he is a yes man.
I have no faith whatsoever for the NBN now.
If it get done, it was be DESPITE him NOT because of his vision.
Oh mathew42 or is it -mathew-, spouting all the old rubbish again and again all over the world.
53% of users havn't chosen 12Mbps and that's exactly what it is, a choice. The LNP plan offers no choice, you pays ya money and ya get whatever you're lucky to get and no refund if it's less.
I'll take the 100/40 plan thanks over a nodelotto plan anytime.
The choice only occurs if you can afford it. The subsidy that high speed users are supposed to provide low speed users is a lie. The majority of high speed users wouldn't be able to afford fibre from the exchange and so are in fact having their fast speeds subsidised by people who could achieve faster speeds on HFC, FTTN, 4G and approaching half of ADSL2+ connections.
The Coalition plan offers the choice of fibre on demand which at ~$3000 for an install appears reasonably priced compared to Labor's $1800/year for 1Gbps AVC only.
The numbers provided by NBNCo to the Parliamentary joint Committee have always presented the most rosy tinge possible. The 47% comes directly from the leaked draft of the NBNCo Corporate Plan 2013 and the trend was upwards. This is the quote:
"As at 30 April 2013, 26% of NBN Co’s FTTP End-Users were on the highest available wholesale speed tier (100/40 Mbps), whilst 47% were on the entry-level wholesale speed tier (12/1 Mbps). These compare with 18% and 49% respectively forecast for FY2013 in the 2012-15 Corporate Plan."
Personally, I'm surprised, as I would have thought that the NBN was still in the "early adopter" phase where one would expect a higher percentage of faster connections.
"highly likely..." yea, right! All and I mean ALL the problems I've had with my broadband have been in the copper right outside my house. It will make NO difference how fast the fiber is to the node when it transitions to crap corroded ancient soaked in water copper infrastructure!
Welcome back Ziggy, its so good to see you running something else that you will destroy with your lack of knowledge of the technology or industry.
Such a shame, NBN actually had something going for it and we would have finally had decent internet connectivity, trouble is they keep putting idiots in director ship roles, and the cost blows out and it wont happen now that Ziggy is in charge..
"Switkowski was the obvious choice as chair..."
....if the objective is to demolish the NBN. Yes, Ziggy was in charge of Telstra and Optus, but his tenure at both companies was at times when neither company was engaged in large scale infrastructure rollouts (unless you count the joke that was HFC a large scale rollout). So his "experience" if worth precisely bugger all in the context of the NBN rollout. This is once again a shameless display of hypocrisy by Malcolm Turnbull. During his time in opposition he lambasted the (now previous) NBNCo board for lacking relevant experience. So naturally the first thing he does is appoint a CEO who lacks relevant experience, and as other comments have already stated, he was rubbish at his job when he was at Telstra.
I've still yet to hear a word from Turnbull in regards to the latest numbers showing a complete absence of a cost blowout in the fibre deployment, which was the last nail in the coffin of the LNP's utterly preposterous $94 billion estimate.
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