Telstra Wants Big Chunk Of NBN

The head of the Tasmanian arm of the National Broadband Network says negotiations for Telstra to buy a stake in the national scheme are taking place “at the highest level”.

Tasmania’s NBN chairman Doug Campbell ­ the former Telstra Countrywide chief ­ told ABC’s Stateline that Telstra wants up to 49 percent of the network.

But he doubts if that goal is possible because Optus and Foxtel (50 percent owned by Telstra) also want in.

Campbell says it is unlikely Telstra will help build the network, but he would like to see Telstra use it as its communications backbone.

“I don’t think we’d actually use them for the build itself; I think we can do this independently of Telstra,” Campbell told the Tasmanian program. “But we do want Telstra to adopt this network as theirs, and use it as if it were their own, and eventually migrate their customers on to it.”