Campbell: NBN HQ decision ‘not even on radar’

James Riley
Friday, 07 August 2009 09:58

Business IT - Technology

Just-appointed NBN Company board member Doug Campbell says a decision on the location of the network’s headquarters is “not even on the radar,” and is a long way down the new board’s To-Do list.

Campbell, who is also chairman of the Tasmanian NBN Company (TNBN Co), said the decision about headquarters be discussed by the board – but even the discussion is unlikely to be any time soon.

“Any decisions about headquarters, or where headquarters buildings will be, is well down the list of things we need to do,” Campbell told iTWire.

“We will continue to consider those things but I couldn’t even begin to estimate when we would make that decision,” he said, “but it’s not even on the radar at this point.”

The eastern seaboard States are competing vigorously for the NBN Co business, and in recent weeks have ramped up their public campaigns to attract the NBN’s top officers.

Queensland Minister for Public Works and ICT Robert Schwarten this week caused a stir by telling state Parliament that NBN Co chairman chief executive Mike Quigley had suggested that the company may not have a single, traditional geographic headquarters.

“Mr Quigley said the headquarters could be decentralised across the major capital cities,” Mr Schwarten told Parliament.

Some observers say the decentralisation of an actual headquarters operation was unlikely. But the significant NBN operational activity would likely occur in State capitals as the principal construction contractors engaged in the massive job of building the network.

Mr Schwarten has this week officially handed Quigley the State’s specific proposal for hosting the NBN Co headquarters – just as John Brumby recently handed Government the Victorian proposal for the HQ.

The NSW Government appointed an NBN Taskforce charged with attracting the HQ to Sydney, and Premier Nathan Rees has loudly spruiked the advantages of the Harbour City – most recently in a newspaper column highlighting Sydney’s status as Australia’s financial services and ICT hub.

South Australian Premier Mike Rann is also known to have written to Kevin Rudd shortly after the NBN announcement seeking more information about opportunities, and is in continuing discussion with the Commonwealth through the Department of Further Education, Employment, Science and Technology.

On the strength that the NBN Co chief executive Quigley lives in Sydney, NSW is said to be the front-runner. But most observers agree that the HQ operation will be modest – certainly in its early stages – as the construction phase is contracted to outside companies.

Meanwhile, Campbell says as a “first mover” Tasmania will become the Test Bed for both the National Broadband Network roll-out across Australia, as well as for NBN services.

“It’s the first cab off the rank and we want to do all our learning down there,” Campbell told iTWire. “It’s going to be very interesting to be able to use Tasmania as our laboratory for the whole of the country.”

“We had to start somewhere and we had to go through some learning, so why not Tasmania, with their Government, working through Aurora Energy (they) seemed well advanced, so it made good sense,” he said.