Quigley and the NBN opposed by boss of Exetel

The chief of broadband service provider Exetel, John Linton has recently expressed his displeasure in Mike Quigley, the chief of the NBN Co and has said that Telstra should be given the NBN to build as it is the only company capable of completing such a task.

The building of a fibre to the home network throughout Australia by the Rudd Government at a cost of $43 billion is seen by Linton as simply being a stunt to cover up the fact that it failed in the promise it initially made back in 2007 to provide a high-speed broadband network by 2008.

Linton recently commented saying “As a political stunt, it’s worked amazingly. So now they have made a promise based on nothing: there’s no costing, no plan and the government has not said how it can be done. The ‘politicians-that-be’ went to the last election saying their version of the NBN would be up and running by the end of 2008. That was a stupid statement.”

With claims of having more than 100 000 customers Exetel has been run by Linton since 2004 and the impact that the NBN centres will have on the wholesale telecommunications market has been one of his greatest criticisms. Applications for port access through AAPT, Optus and Telstra exchanges have become increasingly difficult and ever since the first NBN broadband network was cancelled the industry has become “semi-stalled” according to Linton.

In the next six to nine months there is almost no chance of any ADSL based products becoming available to customers in Australia because of the current bottlenecks said Linton.

He added “The situation as I see it is that the suppliers — Telstra, Optus, AAPT — are not really investing in anything new, especially when you’re referring to ADSL type broadband products.”

He also advised that the current system was not working even with the constraints that the government’s plans had put on the business along with the regulatory oversight by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC.)

Source – Zd Net