Bill Morrow - CEO, nbn
The company behind the rollout of the National Broadband Network (NBN), nbn, has shaken up its executive ranks as it faces the next chapter in its evolution.
A number of changes to nbn’s executive stratum were revealed by the company’s CEO, Bill Morrow, on 8 June, with the changes set to come into effect on 1 July.
“Standing proudly with these accomplishments behind us and confident with the new challenges and priorities ahead, we know we must make a step change to keep pace with the progress of this industry-wide transformation,” Morrow said.
“In order to continue our success in the next phase, our focus on improving customer experience is critical.
“Strong headway is being made across the industry but as we further transition to an [NBN]-enabled nation we know there is more to be done,” he said.
The changes will see nbn chief customer officer – business, John Simon, lead the Business Sales and Marketing department until his retirement in first half next year.
Meanwhile, the company’s chief customer officer – residential, Brad Whitcomb, will lead the Residential Sales and Marketing department after three years leading Strategy, Transformation, Regulatory and Technology.
Other executive changes include chief network engineering officer, Peter Ryan, who will lead the newly formed Network Engineering and Operations team, comprising the combined Network Service Operations department and the Network Performance Engineering team.
Additionally, chief systems engineering officer, John McInerney, will lead the newly formed Systems Engineering and Operations team, and chief strategy officer, JB Rousselot, will lead Strategy, Transformation, Regulatory and Technology.
Chief network deployment officer, Kathrine Dyer, will be promoted to the executive committee to lead the construction of the remaining portion of the network with the newly formed Network Deployment and Planning team.
Morrow said that the company’s organisational changes were prompted by a number of factors, including the requirement of a “fundamentally different” go-to-market strategy to the one nbn has so far applied for the residential segment, with the company expecting to potentially receive nearly $1 billion of future annual revenue from the business segment.
Additionally, nbn said that its organisation model needs to evolve from “network build” to “network operate and optimise”, with a greater emphasis on customers – both retail service providers (RSPs) and end-users.
“I'm confident in our ability to organise around the next phase of priorities and am pleased we have such strong and diverse talent to bring fresh thinking and proven expertise to our executive leadership,” Morrow said.
The executive shuffle comes just days after the company behind the NBN launched its new discount model for the Connectivity Virtual Circuit (CVC) charge that network RSPs pay for service bandwidth.
The new model, launched on 1 June, calculates the level of CVC discount based on an individual RSP’s average capacity purchased per end-user each month. The discount was previously based on an industry average.
The company hopes that it will encourage RSPs to buy more bandwidth than they have under the pre-existing arrangement.
