NBN Co boss quits

NBN Co CEO Mike Quigley has quit his post, announcing on Friday that he will retire from corporate life after four years at the helm of the organisation.

Quigley will continue as CEO until the board appoints a successor to “oversee the next stage of the company’s development”, NBN Co said.

Quigley, who came out of retirement to become the company’s first CEO, said in a statement: “My job was to lay the foundations for the NBN for the next 30 years. That job is largely complete.

“NBN Co is now a well-established wholesale telecommunications company with a nationwide workforce, delivery partners, infrastructure agreements, complex IT systems and more than 40 retail customers which are supplying fast, reliable and affordable broadband to a growing number of Australians,” he said.

“I joined NBN because I believed better telecommunications was central to Australia’s ongoing success. I still believe that today.

“The ramp-up in construction and the news last week that the company had passed more than 200,000 premises with fibre gives me further confidence that the NBN build can be delivered by 2021 in line with the projections in the company’s corporate plan.”

In a joint statement, Deputy Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Federal Minister for Finance and Deregulation, Senator Penny Wong, thanked Quigley for his role in establishing NBN Co and rolling out a world-class communications network to all Australians.

“He was eager to join the project because he understood the importance of nation-building infrastructure that is essential for our nation’s economic future,” the statement said.

“Mr Quigley also understands, intuitively, what all good infrastructure builders know: you do it once and you do it right.

“Mr Quigley was instrumental in negotiating the deal with Telstra which has paved the way for the NBN rollout.

“Over the past four years, Mr Quigley has also successfully managed the switching on of fibre, fixed wireless and satellite connections right across the country, as NBN Co has established the full scale rollout of the National Broadband Network.”

More to follow.