NBN to sack 800 staff, dissolve business unit – The Australian Financial Review

A spokesman said the exact details of the job cuts were yet to be announced, saying the staff themselves would be informed before any public announcements were made.
The restructure will also see NBN Co’s business sales unit dissolved into the residential sales division, resulting in the departure of NBN Co’s head of business Paul Tyler.
The decision follows a stoush with the private sector over NBN Co’s aggressive pursuit of business customers. Mr Tyler had been tasked with raising business revenues to $1 billion a year by 2022, to help meet its overall revenue target.
But private players such as Telstra and Vocus argued that NBN Co’s practice of signing deals directly with end customers was a breach of its wholesale-only mandate, and in January NBN Co eventually gave in and promised not to do it anymore.
The new Customer, Product and Marketing division will be led by chief customer officer Brad Whitcomb.
However, Mr Rue said this did not mean the telco would stop selling to businesses. He said in the 2020 financial year revenue from business customers hit $750 million, and that a “qualified pipeline of sale prospects” would “contribute to closing the balance of the $1 billion revenue target”.
NBN Co has also created a networks, engineering and security business unit headed by chief engineering officer John Parkin, and is shaking up its operations and legal units, resulting in the departure of chief legal officer Justin Forsell later this year.
There remain around 100,000 hard-to-access residences to connect to the NBN across Australia. After they are connected, construction will be limited to greenfield sites and upgrades, resulting in a shift from a heavy-engineering and construction focus to a more “consumer-led” one.
Former Internet Australia boss and current TelSoc vice president Laurie Patton said the job cull was “exactly what they should not be doing.
“They need to begin the replacement of millions of inferior connections. They need to retain staff to do this.”
“Funding the inevitable rebuild would not only help the millions of NBN customers struggling with a slow and unreliable service it would provide employment to people retrenched due to the coronavirus,” he said.

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