Kevin Rudd’s war on Fat Cat salaries has produced its first moderately overweight cat, with Government announcing a maximum salary of $1.95 million for new NBN Company chief executive Mike Quigley.

The Australian Government has appointed the first four Board directors to the Tasmania NBN Company joint venture with the Tasmania Government and Aurora Energy – with more to come as negotiations between the partners mature.

As part of the biggest reshuffle of public service Mandarins in a decade, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has appointed a senior Victorian bureaucrat Peter Harris to take the reins of the department of Broadband Communications and the Digital Economy.

The Lindsay Tanner-appointed Government 2.0 Taskforce is preparing a very One-Dot-Oh road trip in the next three weeks, conducting open forums in capital cities across the country as it canvasses directly for ideas from the broad community.

At the top of the agenda when the newly-appointed NBN Company board meets in Canberra today – after a brief photo-op with the Minister at Parliament House – will be the composition of the Tasmania NBN Company board.

Strong mobile revenue growth and a large increase in new mobile and broadband customers has helped number two telco Optus produce a healthy 13 per cent growth in first quarter net profit to $139 million.

The long-serving communications department secretary Patricia Scott will leave the post shortly as part of a Rudd Government shake-up of the most senior ranks of public servants.

The Capital Territory’s home-grown broadband infrastructure and service provider TranACT will seek opportunities to participate in the National Broadband Network build in and around the Canberra area. But the company has no plan to slow its own roll-out of fibre investments ahead of the NBN roll-out.

The federal coalition has renewed its calls for clarity on the future of the Universal Service Obligation system, saying a Government review had become mired in the complexities and delays of the National Broadband Network process.

The Commonwealth loves the internet. So much so that federal departments built 27 new web sites in one short eight month period – with design costs reaching close to $450,000.