Greenfield developers accuse NBN of misleading private installers

The country’s greenfield fibre installers are saying the Government has deceived them by asking a number of companies for their advice and then choosing to go with a more expensive alternative.

The comments came during a hearing led by Parliament’s Joint Committee on the National Broadband Network, which also heard testimony from NBN Co. chief executive Mike Quigley regarding his history at Alcatel-Lucent during a bribery investigation.

Michael Sparksman, who is the spokesperson for the Greenfield Fibre Operators of Australia, has said the National Broadband Network panelled a number of different companies before deciding to award a contract to Fujitsu to install fibre in new estates.

Fujitsu has subsequently sub-contracted ServiceStream to roll out the new developments.

But Sparksman says this is not only more expensive than his organisation’s members could deliver, but it also represents a threat to private business – the law now allows greenfield developers to have their estates hooked up to the NBN for free.

“We think this is misleading, and deceptive of the NBN Co., and we believe they wish to be the only player in that market.”

“We believe that after they sought how to do all this by questioning experts, they procured all the information they needed and then just decided to do it all themselves.”

Sparksman says that judging by the number of connections the NBN will need to fulfil by the end of the year, it would be cheaper and more efficient to have various greenfield operators do all the work.

“There have been some 133,000 connections from January to last week, and before the end of the year that number is going to double. But they need to have an experienced operator do that, because in Tasmania they’ve rolled out less than 10,000.”

“At the same time our members have been able to roll out over 400,000 connections to end users. “

Sparksman argues it costs roughly $3,000 per home for the NBN to hook up buildings to the network, but several private operators could do this for $1,500.

“Why wouldn’t the Government… choose to do it this way and give private companies the same amount of funding?”

Meanwhile, chief executive Mike Quigley was also questioned by committee members over some ambiguity regarding his position at Alcatel-Lucent during a bribery investigation that was conducted by American regulators.

The issue is that Quigley was Alcatel president for the American in the early 2000s. While he originally said that bribery investigations were outside his jurisdiction, it was found that this was not the case.

While Quigley maintains he was not part of the investigation, he nevertheless corrected the error yesterday.

”This was an error for which I unreservedly apologise,” he said, adding that he “probably spoke too loosely”.

Opposition communications spokesman Malcolm Turnbull questioned Quigley at the meeting, saying he should have raised the matter during interviews for the NBN job.

“There’s no effort to impugn his integrity but as representatives of the people whose taxes are paying for this NBN, we are entitled to ask questions and try to get to the facts,” Turnbull said yesterday.