New NBN leader Morrow realigns top management ranks

Bill Morrow may still be new to his job as CEO of Australia's troubled National Broadband Network Company (NBN Co.), but already he's exercising his influence by ousting three of its key executives.

NBN Co.'s CTO Gary McLaren, head of corporate Kevin Brown, and CFO Robin Payne are set to leave their posts over the next few months.

Citing an e-mail sent to NBN staff, ZDNet Australia reported that Morrow said there was a general lack of clarity around goals for NBN Co., confusion about the NBN organization, inadequate decision making, poor process management and a poor company culture.

Beginning in May, Morrow said he will switch to a new executive structure that's centered around five key elements: finance, culture & transformation, legal, regulatory and investor & media relations.

NBN Co.'s chief strategy officer JB Rousselot, chief operating officer Greg Adcock, chief customer officer John Simon, chief legal counsel Justin Forsell and head of regulatory affairs Caroline Lovell will all directly report to Morrow.

The company also plans to name a new leader of investor and media relations and is going to search for a new CFO. Former Vodafone executive Bradley Whitcomb has been named culture and transformation officer. He will start in his new role in May.

These changes come as Australia's Coalition government moves away from an all fiber to the premises (FTTP) last mile approach to one that will include a mix of fiber, copper and hybrid fiber coax (HFC) methods.

Under the revised "optimized multi-technology mix" plan, only 26 percent of premises will be connected to FTTP by 2020, while another 44 percent will be served by fiber to the node (FTTN), and the remaining 30 percent served by HFC. By using this multi-technology approach, the government said it anticipates it will be able to deliver up to 50 Mbps download speeds to 91 percent of the country's households.   

For more:
- ZDnet Australia has this article

Related articles:
NBN Co. taps former Clearwire leader Bill Morrow as CEO during transitional time
NBN Co. names former Telstra boss Switkowski as chairman
Former Telstra boss in line to head NBN Co.
NBN would spur growth of HbbTV, save Seven West business, exec says