Finance NBN under attack for blocking competition Phil Jacob 410 words 18 April 2012 Daily Telegraph DAITEL 1 - State 28 English Copyright 2012 News Ltd. All Rights Reserved INTERNODE founder and chief executive Simon Hackett has warned the government's ``anti-cherry picking'' legislation will unfairly prevent rivals competing with the national broadband network. In an attack on the government's $36 billion scheme, Mr Hackett said there were still a number of problems with the company, including questions surrounding what the majority of staff did. He said NBN Co had grown its employee base considerably but he could not figure out ``what 90 per cent of those employees do, given that most of the construction is handled by contractors''. ``Solving a problem by throwing more people at it is not a good example of cost control,'' he said. The three-year roll-out plan released last month is not an indication of where the NBN will be connected, he said, but more a promise that construction will commence in those areas in the next three years. Mr Hackett also noted the inconsistency of the anti-cherry-picking laws as they exempt wireless ISPs. Business-centric wireless ISP BigAir can continue setting up 1Gbps wireless broadband links and not be affected by those laws. Neither BigAir nor Internode are big enough to impact NBN viability, Mr Hackett said. ``We are not a threat, (anti-cherry-picking laws) are actually busted and need to go away,'' he said. ``The problem it was originally set up to solve was solved commercially in those two big deals with Telstra and Optus. What is left is just a threat to innovation.'' Opposition broadband spokesman Malcolm Turnbull yesterday backed Mr Hackett's comments. ``These cherry-picking laws will provide a huge financial windfall for the NBN at the expense of competition and innovation,'' he said. ``Labor are imposing this monopoly and preventing competition solely to minimise the money that the NBN will eventually cost taxpayers and yet, it will mean consumers will suffer through higher price and less choice.'' At the end of last year, South Australia-based Internode was acquired by iiNet. With the acquisition of Internode, iiNet became one of the undisputed ``big four'' of the ISP industry, with Telstra, Optus, TPG, and iiNet sharing about 90 per cent of the fixed-line broadband market base. Mr Hackett noted consolidation in the market, where larger companies were snapping up smaller players to build scale, had been fast-tracked in recent years. ``We are now in a ``post-consolidation,'' Mr Hackett said yesterday. Document DAITEL0020120417e84i0004f

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