Earlier today, NBN Co appointed one of the most senior executives of media organisation News Corp Australia to be its new chief financial officer. Stephen Rue will commence work from the 1st of July.
Rupert Murdoch & News Corp have often been accused of having influenced the Liberal Government’s decision to scrap the previous Fibre-to-the-Premises NBN design and replace it with an inferior design based on acquiring and reusing old copper phone lines owned by Telstra, as well as the existing Hybrid Fibre-Coaxial networks owned by Telstra and Optus.
News Corp and Telstra are joint owners of Foxtel, which uses the Telstra HFC network to provide Cable TV to Australian subscribers who live in cabled areas.
The high upload and download speeds provided by a Fibre-to-the-Premises NBN would significantly lower the barrier to entry for other businesses who want to offer competing Pay TV and video-on-demand services.
Recently, Independent Federal MP Rob Oakeshott retired and released his autobiography in which he recounted his negotiations with the Liberal party to form a government after the 2010 federal election.
Due to the Liberal government’s insistence on dismantling the NBN, he instead formed a government with the Labor party and continued to provide support until they were defeated in the 2013 federal election.
In regard to the ruling Liberal party’s current NBN policy, he stated that it had the “potential to return millions and millions of dollars in future profits” to News Limited and Telstra through Foxtel.
“As much as I have personal regard for [Minister for Communications] Malcolm Turnbull, I think his telecommunications policy is wholly owned by Telstra and News Limited. It does nothing for consumers, and is a massive win for a couple of corporate boards.”
We note that our Director of R&D previously wrote to Rupert Murdoch, inviting him to provide a clarification of his views towards the NBN and its design. To date, we have received no reply, but our offer still stands
Links:
Delimiter: News Corp CFO to lead NBN Co’s financials
ZDNet: Abbott was unmovable on ‘shocker’ NBN policy: Oakeshott
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