NBN roll-out to 'maximise' local suppliers

James Riley
Thursday, 20 October 2011 11:00

IT Policy - Government Tech Policy

NBN Co chief executive Mike Quigley has told a senate committee the national broadband network roll-out would make use of locally-produced product to the "maximum extent," dismissing analysis that Australian firms and Australian staff were being by-passed.

Mr Quigley said Australian producers were being used wherever possible for the supplier of equipment for the fibre roll-out, and would use Australian contractors almost entirely for the construction of the network.

He dismissed as "bizarre" an analysis by The Australian newspaper that the NBN roll-out was not using a fair share of local suppliers and locally produced product.

"We have a policy for maximising local content," Mr Quigley said. By the way, just for the record, I absolutely disagree with the analysis (by the Australian): in fact, it was quite bizarre."

"When it comes to things such as buying fibre equipment, we are using local content to the maximum extent we can. But I think everybody would realise you cannot buy (some specialised equipment) from an Australian supplier as they are not made in Australia," Mr Quigley said.

"We are buying fibre from Corning and Prysmian. I have been to both of the factories. They are both making substantial investments in Australia, bringing people on and bringing in capital for plant, so we are maximising local content, even to the extent of using some very sophisticated local resources, a spinout of the University of Queensland," he said.

Despite pressures applied through the mining boom, Mr Quigley said the company did not expect access to skills during the constrcution phase to be a significant problem for contractors engaged to roll-out the network.

NBN Co would invest significantly in some training requirements, but much would depend on the general economic climate over the next ten years.

"The analysis we have done of skills that are going to be needed in the rollout indicate that we do not expect to run into significant problems," Mr Quigley said. "We are going to have to do some training and we are already doing some analysis and talking to training institutions about getting that training done."

Meanwhile, Mr Quigley dismissed suggestions that increased electricity charges in the coming years would have any significant bearing on the cost profile of running the network.

South Australian Liberal Senator Simon Birmingham had noted that the ICT sector accounted for as much as 7 per cent of electricity usage, and asked whether such a big user of power would be affected by hikes in energy costs.

Mr Quigley said electricity was not a significant cost input, and that the passive optical network being rolled out by NBN Co was, regardless, the most efficient network in terms of energy usage.

"I am confident that we are using the best possible technology we can in terms of efficiency of delivering broadband to the Australian people for the lowest energy usage," Mr Quigley said.