Alcatel-Lucent appoints new chief to head up NBN activities

Peter Dinham
Monday, 18 May 2009 12:37

IT Industry - Strategy

Alcatel-Lucent has appointed an executive to a newly created position to head up the company’s activities on the National Broadband Network (NBN).

Australian managing director for Alcatel-Lucent, Andrew Butterworth, said today John Turner, who has held several positions with the company, had been appointed to the role as part of the company’s commitment towards “assisting the progress of the NBN.”

Butterworth said that in previous roles with the company, Turner had responsibility for heading up its access network activities in Australasia, its bids, proposals and tendering operations in Australasia and North Asia, and its services solutions and marketing activities in Asia Pacific.

Turner was introduced to an audience of industry peers and broadband enthusiasts at today’s Alcatel-Lucent Sustainable Fibre Nations industry forum.

According to Butterworth, the forum was all about “stimulating industry cooperation and discussion around the challenges and benefits of fibre deployments – bringing to the table our global and local experience to assist this dialogue.

“John’s strong background in broadband access technologies supports this new focus. He will ensure that Alcatel-Lucent can actively contribute in bringing the NBN to the next level, as the project’s details are defined in the coming months.”

John Turner says he looks forward to “making a contribution to what will likely be the largest communications infrastructure project in my lifetime,” adding that Alcatel-Lucent is “at the forefront of broadband, whether through the more than 90 fibre to the home deployments we are doing worldwide – including Australia - or the ground-breaking Bell Labs innovations.”

In another announcement at the forum, Alcatel-Lucent and the Telecommunications Journal of Australia (TJA) kicked off the third “broadband environment challenge,” an annual initiative the two organisations say that “seeks innovative papers on broadband’s potential to drive environmental sustainability goals.”

Professor Peter Gerrand, managing editor of TJA, said submissions from around the world would be judged by a panel of independent experts, with the winning entry receiving a $20,000 cash prize.

“Now in its third year, this is a very motivating time for the Challenge, given that the government’s recently announced fibre-to-the-home NBN will provide the high-speed broadband infrastructure needed in Australia to support these green initiatives,” Professor Gerrand said.