Two officials of the Sydney-based Fiber Corp have put the boot into NBN Co following the announcement of the latter company's second-quarter results today.
NBN Co reported on Thursday that its losses had blown out to $1.83 billion for the first six months of 2016.
Fiber Corp announced in December that it would be offering broadband connections to high-rise residential and commercial developments in Sydney, with speeds between 200Mbps and 10Gbps.
Sam Scoutas, managing director of Fiber Corp, said he had made it plain that NBN Co needed to put in a lot of work for its network to be suited to residential homes and rural Australia.
{loadposition sam08}He questioned why, despite the need for infrastructure improvements, it appeared to be unacceptable for private firms like Fiber Corp and Opticomm to compete with the government for work in the high-rise and broadacre sectors.
"Why is this so? The excuse is cash flows but the losses have been increasing for NBN Co since its inception," a clearly irritated Scoutas said. "The federal government then introduces a levy which will not make a dent in the $1.8 billion loss? Why?"
He said he was still shocked that, having offered the government a solution that reduced the burden on the taxpayer and could achieve greater results than NBN Co, his firm was told it and its competitors were playing for a small percentage of the market.
"At what point does the financial result of NBN Co matter?" Scoutas asked. "At what point will they be judged on their performance to the end users of Australia? Why is the speed of Internet and associated factors not reported to the Australian public? It is clear and obvious that all is not as it seems with NBN Co and the public deserves some answers."
Fiber Corp chief information officer Joel Clarke expressed surprise as to why Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was not exercised about the NBN Co's performance.
He pointed out that Turnbull had reacted sharply to the news that Australia Post chief executive Ahmed Fahour was taking home an annual pay packet of $5.6 million. "However Australia Post managed a 2016 profit of $36 million," Clarke said. "Now, let's turn our attention to Malcolm's little baby and the money pit called NBN Co."
He said not only had NBN Co failed the Australian public and business by not delivering fibre to the premises (FttP) to brownfield or new builds under 100 dwellings, it had again "cost Australian taxpayers $1.83 billion (or 326 Ahmed Fahours) – a 47% increase over last year's net loss".
"When asked NBN’s chief executive Bill Morrow labelled the financial results 'impressive'," Clarke said. "I agree, it's 'impressive' he still has a job.
"The simple fact is something is wrong with the product. (That can be the only explanation) when NBN had reached four million homes but only activated 1.6 million services, meaning 60% of people who are enabled to get NBN are happy to stay on non-NBN networks or communicate using tin-cans and a string.
"Their official report said they would finish the rollout in the next 18 months to double what they had achieved so far. How can they do in 18 months what they could not do in 10 years? At what cost will they finish the job? The results speak for themselves."