Why Simon Hackett Is A Good Deal For NBN Co And NBN Fans Alike

Simon Hackett has joined the board of NBN Co. If you’re a fan of the fibre-to-the-home NBN or your name is on that little petition floating about, that probably excites you for no other reason than the fact that you’ve heard his name before. Simon is actually very sensible. Here’s why his joining NBN Co really is quite a good thing.

The best thing about Simon Hackett joining NBN Co is the fact that he’s a pragmatist. He believes in a national broadband network, but knows that right now, it’s too expensive for wholesalers.

That was the crux of his talk at this year’s CommsDay Summit: “Building a Fibre NBN on a Copper Budget“. The slides from his talk are above.

He says that the NBN should be like Lotus: a company whose motto went “simplify, then add lightness”.

By doing so, Hackett says, you’re left with a car with no creature comforts that goes damn fast, and that’s what the NBN should be: a place where the telco providers add value for the customer, rather than NBN Co trying to. NBN Co’s job is to make it fast and cheap.

The talk focusses on what Simon Hackett thinks would be a good idea to pull out of the network to make it cheaper (or “lighter” as the analogy goes). He doesn’t think we need extra-cost Quality Of Service controls on the network or PSTN Voice ports.

This talk is great, and it adds a huge amount of context as to what Simon Hackett will bring to the NBN Co board. He wants a simpler and cheaper NBN, like the Coalition, but still believes it should be fast.

If you can spare 20 minutes, it’s well worth watching. [Simon Hackett]


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