The Australian | February 25, 2011 | Mitchell Bingemann
TELECOMS: Vodafone Hutchison Australia is readying itself to become a player in the National Broadband Network as early as next year after revealing it suffered a significant slow-down in mobile customer growth for the second half of last year.
The mobile operator is in talks with the government’s NBN Co to test fixed-line broadband offerings later this year with a view to launching commercial services next year.
“These trials are about us learning how to deal with the NBN and what type of offers will work well,” VHA chief executive Nigel Dews said.
“It’s important to start these things early. Obviously it will be a while before it’s all up and running but this is a good time to see how it will work and start learning about the things we might do in the future.”
VHA unveiled its entry into the NBN play at Hutchison Telecommunications Australia’s full-year results. HTA is a half shareholder of VHA.
Mr Dews said an increasingly aggressive Telstra and a spate of network failures had crunched VHA’s subscriber growth at the mobile operator in the second half to December 31, during which time it had added just 142,000 new customers, compared with 539,000 in the first half.
That growth was dwarfed by Telstra, which added more than 900,000 customers in the period.
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