news Telstra has launched an internal recruitment programme aimed to fulfil workforce needs as the firm prepares to design and manage the upgrade of its former hybrid-fibre coaxial (HFC) cable TV network as part of the NBN roll-out.
Under a deal signed between the telco and NBN Co in April, Telstra is to carry out the design, some of the construction and all of the construction management of the work required to bring the NBN network to over three million homes currently in the footprint of Telstra’s HFC network.
Along with Optus’ HFC network, the copper-based technology will provide fast broadband for around 4 million of the 11.9 million premises that will be served by the NBN in total.
The use of upgraded HFC technology is part of the Coalition’s controversial ‘multi-technology mix’ policy aimed to deploy the network faster and art a lower cost than using optic fibre.
Critics have argued that using fibre to the premises would better ‘future proof’ the nation’s digital economy.
The Communication Workers’ Union (CWU) spoke up on the newly announced recruitment drive, acknowledging that it “makes sense” for Telstra to drive and oversee the HFC upgrade necessary to deliver the speeds of 50Mbps (and beyond) that current policy on the NBN requires.
However, it warned that resourcing the contract will involve “rebuilding its pool of HFC skills” which the CWU believes has “shrunk significantly” in recent years.
The recruitment programme is currently aimed at network delivery staff and is seeking expressions of interest from employees with skill sets relevant to the HFC contract.
These, the CWU said, include design and/or field experience in controller area network (CAN) or HFC; project management; reporting and analytical skills; contract negotiation and/or management; construction project management and implementation skills.
The CWU also welcomed the fact that Telstra is seeking to bring its own staff onto the HFC project and the union further encouraged its members to apply for the future roles.
In addition to Telstra staff who already have relevant skills, others may be eligible for retraining under the $100 million NBN training deed between Telstra and the Commonwealth, the CWU added.
The union indicated it would expect these funds to be used “to maximise those opportunities for ongoing employment for our members which the HFC and other NBN-related contracts provide”.
Image credit: NBN company
Although this says internal only I have a strong feeling there will be 457 visas involved with this program. Jobson Growth.
“In addition to Telstra staff who already have relevant skills, others may be eligible for retraining under the $100 million NBN training deed between Telstra and the Commonwealth, the CWU added.”
Telstra is given billions re nbn purchase/lease/maintenance deals regarding their current copper & HFC network …and now they are also gifted millions in retraining costs.
Are you flippin’ kidding me!?
Liberals sure know how to negatiate.. sorry.. I meant Telstra;
Liberals got bent over & had their dreamt up superior economic managers award repeating plunged up inside them by a loving caring Telstra team.
Later, RIPP.
The Liberals have vested interests in Telstra doing well. It’s not a matter of incompetence, it’s a matter of corruption.
How is the Government investing in training a bad thing? It makes people employed and gets them off the welfare system and makes them tax payers. If these people were already employed then it makes their previous job available for someone else. $100 million is nothing compared to the billions and billions spent on social security. What would you rather, the government give no money for training and HFC apprenticeships and giving Australian people skills and just allow them to bring in tons of 457 from Europe, Asia and the US where they have the skills?
Considering Telstra is being PAID to do the work, then being PAID to train the staff to do the work, seems a little like double dipping to me.
If you bid for work and get the contract it shouldn’t be on the basis that the Govt is going to subsidise your training costs, especially since Telstra had the inhouse skills then rentrenched them.
If they’re only starting to advertise jobs now, it’s going to be ages before we actually see a working service – particularly as the original 3YR plan had a lot of HFC installs this year.
They only advertised now because Telstra wasn’t as confident as Malcolm the Mess Turnbull of the LNP winning the election.
Given that the ALP policy was also to adopt HFC in the areas where the network exists, which is unfortunately a necessity given the contracts/deals and investment into this course of action to date, I doubt this was the reason
HFC. Jobs for the future. Joke.
I’d like to see the dates on the management memo’s regarding Telstra’s winding back of HFC requirements. How many years ago would that have been?
And here comes the taxpayer funded money drip to Telstra again. Through training they should have been doing themselves. Lovely.
Right back where we were at the start of all this. Taxpayer funded Telstra for another generation.
Hopefully at least some of the 326 people that had their jobs outsourced/offshored by Telstra can get reskilled…
So the MTM farce continues. More money pissed away on a politically motivated joke of a network.
So here’s that shinning example of the private sector providing a solution the coalition clowns and their squealing pig apologists were telling us about… it only took large wads of taxpayer cash from GimpCo to motivate them.
“it only took large wads of taxpayer cash from GimpCo to motivate them.”
Free market! That is, free for /them/…
Telstra upgraded its HFC network in 2007 (to 30mbps). Trujillo’s 2009 (to 100mbps) upgrade announcement saw Conroy threaten the company over future cellular spectrum if they continued.
3+m more premises (more than double total completed) would be passed today for zero cost to taxpayers if not for Conroy/Quigley. Enjoying high speed internet utilising a technology widely deployed in other markets.
Blaming the private sector shows a remarkable ignorance.
Ahh Richard trying to rewrite history once again the threat was for the separation of Telstra.
Jk It’s all there. Sure they were also threatened with a split (would have cost taxpayer’s upwards of $20b), but spectrum threat more effective (can revenue declining, mobile growing).
@ Richard,
Here’s your precious private enterprise/Telstra/Sol in all their glory…
http://www.afr.com/business/telecommunications/sol-trujillo-paid-millions-by-extelstra-contractor-20151223-glug3w
Keep that one eye open and the other completely shut Richard.
You’re welcome
@ Richard.
“3+m more premises (more than double total completed) would be passed today for zero cost to taxpayers if not for Conroy/Quigley”.
There are four possible answer to this.
1. Conjecture
2. Baseless ideological stupidity
3. Absolute fucking BS
4. All of the above
I’d suggest 4.
You’re welcome.
Nah Rizz
I think he meant we all could have had FTTP 6 years ago at no cost to the taxpayer if not for Howard privatising Telstra
+1
And saying the private sector is a panacea shows just as much ignorance, and lack of historical knowledge.
Your comment is invalid.
@Richard “Trujillo’s 2009 (to 100mbps) upgrade announcement saw Conroy threaten the company over future cellular spectrum if they continued. ”
Absolute BS Richard. And it’s such BS it doesn’t deserve to be taken seriously. And it doesn’t reflect well on your credibility. A joke comes to mind …..
“Trujillo’s 2009 (to 100mbps) upgrade announcement saw Conroy threaten the company over future cellular spectrum if they continued.”
[Citation Needed]
“3+m more premises (more than double total completed) would be passed today for zero cost to taxpayers if not for Conroy/Quigley. ”
Absolute bullshit. Upgrading speeds doesn’t magically cover houses skipped during rollout.
I dont ever recall Telstra saying they would roll out HFC in Wollongong. So how was Sol’s bluff ever going to help me?
Also, given it was an upgrade, not an extension, where do the 3m+ come from? Wouldnt those places already have HFC going past them now?
I’m glad other people see it and it isn’t just me ;o)
As promised I’ve updated the charts to include weekly performance through 7-Jul-2016, extending CP16 forecasts through EFY17. Sadly Quigley’s forecasts end FY16, nonetheless his failure is obvious. HFC a big component of the forecast brownfields, we’ll monitor performance with interest (aggressive increase expected):
https://www.dropbox.com/s/2cpmjufh576l5ch/brownfields-actuals-v-forecast.pdf?dl=0
For those that need to see what an actual ramp-up (passed & activated) looks like:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/6fwadkqyvrz9kkb/brownfields-actuals.pdf?dl=0
To complete Quigley’s failures I’ve also graphed greenfields’ actual v forecast (mgmt comparisons welcome):
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0ve709twvdkoeuj/greenfields-actuals-v-forecast.pdf?dl=0
I think I speak for all Delims in congratulating Morrow and team for exceeding CP rollout forecasts for the first time ( 8th year ). Sadly revenue performance, like costs, unlikely to be as kind. AR16 in a month or so.
@Richard,
So even though we all, as a country, don’t yet have atleast 25Mb/s before the election finished.. We will, atleast have the promised 25Mb/s to the whole country before 2016 ends ..Is this correct? ..If not, why not?
Liberal/nbn lies, or just mtm failures,(including their budgetary blowouts & soon to be no investers issue)?
Later, RIPP :)
@ri because the policy (all parties) a disaster. Covered wayback:
https://delimiter.com.au/2016/05/24/hypocrisy-afr-launches-bizarre-attack-labor-nbn-raids/#comment-740082
You’d agree rollout performance is much improved;-)
LOL XD ..You’re shitting me, right?
You avoid the questions posed that show Liberal & Libshilled-nbn failure, while then linking over to another articles comments section with more of your deluded ramblings/stats to try and dodge the simple question that I asked.
Then you try to trick/wedge me into agreeing with you.. Deluded much!?
Incase my post is too difficult for you to scroll too now.. lol.. I re-quote it below;
Awaiting with baited breath your answer to the question posed.
RIPP Quote: “@Richard,
So even though we all, as a country, don’t yet have atleast 25Mb/s before the election finished.. We will, atleast have the promised 25Mb/s to the whole country before 2016 ends ..Is this correct? ..If not, why not?
Liberal/nbn lies, or just mtm failures,(including their budgetary blowouts & soon to be no investers issue)?”
Later, RIPP ;)
Every time you assert this Richard, an amusing analogy comes to mind.
The original FTTH rollout targets were a bucket that needed to be filled with water. The original rollout filled half of that bucket. I’m being overly critical there, but you’d accuse me of bias otherwise.
Then you come along and state “Hey, it’s not a bucket any more, it’s a thimble. And they fill it every month. See the good job they’re doing?”
It’s quite simple.
It’s a thimble Richard.
Any of Quigley’s forecasts and actuals beyond September 2013 are null and void Richard, despite you attempting to compare them to existing Morrow actuals. You cannot use them as a measure of his success or failure given that it counted on events (like a ramp up) that was delayed by the Coalition after they took power, and has now petered out as the FTTH rollout declines. That’s just one example, but you get the idea.
Your comparison baselines are flawed. It’s such a shame that everyone but you sees that, because it’s just a waste of time discussing metrics that make your conclusion (that Quigley’s “failure was obvious”) irrelevant.
Murdoch
He does see it. The fact he has to spin it as he has claims shows that he sees.
Ah, pretty much the majority of customers are still on the “old NBN”
New NBN rollout has been excruciatingly slow.
Soon enough the facts will be so obvious even you wont be able to obfuscate them. Nodes aren’t getting activated because they’re not powered. This is a growing issue for nbn, and prob part of the reason they’re splitting a node to support multiple pillars, while increasing coper length and further reducing the customer base that is able to get over 50Mbs speeds and pay the higher fees to nbn for the privilege.
i hate supporting fttn. wiith FTTP i can log into the nbn portal, check out if anything is plugged into the ntd, what the mac address of the cpe is, see if that’s presented at the NNI and go from there. fttn just tells me if there’s sync on the line.
then you have the wonder of fttn in that nbn consider <2.4 drops a day a good line and up to 5 drops a day is so so and they'll try to fob you off by applying a stability profile which may or may not drop you speed below the rate you're paying for.
we've had a number of customer complaints that their sync speed wont let them achieve 50Mbs, which is the plan speed they're WILLING TO PAY FOR.
copper quality is VERY variable. I've seen customers at 700M getting 65Mbs while others around 400M can't get 50Mbs.
“You’d agree rollout performance is much improved;-)”
Two years behind versus four years behind. Yup, what an ‘improvement’. Higher is better, right numbers boy?
As we move in to term 2 and the coming three years (which will be six in total if they get to the end of the term) I think it’s time for you to get over your “Quigley Crush” Richard ;o)
Not entirely sure what Greenfields have to do with Mikes NBNCo anyway, seeing as they were supposed to the the “last resort” provider, but whatever.
Throwing chips to the stupid seagulls.
Greenfields significant because they can’t blame underperformance on Telstra (but I’m sure someone else is responsible;-).
Perhaps time to do a total of all techs. Perhaps an exercise for the reader (rofl).
For those needing help reading the actual v prediction graphs; the white area under the purple line highlights Quigley’s failure, the green above the blue line Morrow’s success.
“stupid seagulls”
http://www.onekind.org/education/animals_a_z/seagull
Fact: Seagulls are very clever.
“highlights Quigley’s failure”
Quigley’s “failure” cannot be determined.
No matter how many times you repeat it Richard, your conclusion is incorrect.
Perhaps if you check what “last resort” actually means Richard?
Sure, I’d also like to see you do one that indexes who actually planned, designed and contracted that part of the build. That would actually be pretty (historically) interesting.
I’d like to point out that I was quite civil, you’re the one that started throwing around the insults.
Such hate and bile in his attack on you :)
Such are the crosses we bear Gav :o(
No doubt he’ll dig out that one time I went off at him after months of him dumping on me…but I have broad shoulders and do it for my country (already having 100Mbps and being “promised”a possible 10Gbps by Malcolm and Bill Morrow!!), while Richard does it mostly for himself…I’ll get over it ;o)
Sample of TM’s contribution to the “debate”:
https://delimiter.com.au/2016/05/20/nbn-raids-attack-press-freedom-says-media-union/#comment-739131
Feigns outrage.
As I foretold, thanks Richard, I love being proved right :o)
Anytime you’d like to discuss things like an adult, i’m more than happy to.
@ Richard
“Throwing chips to the stupid seagulls.”
Yet you sob like a whiny little bitch when people refer to you in kind…(see what I did there?)
Glass houses Dicky, glass houses…
You’re welcome
“Greenfields significant because they can’t blame underperformance on Telstra”
Except Telstra is rolling out to greenfields, so uhh, whoopsiedoodle.
I think I speak for all Delims in congratulating Morrow and team for exceeding CP rollout forecasts for the first time ( 8th year ).
Like hell you are !
“Sadly Quigley’s forecasts end FY16, nonetheless his failure is obvious.”
Hard to fulfill a forecast when the enemy demolishes the plan three years prior.
“I think I speak for all Delims in congratulating Morrow and team for exceeding CP rollout forecasts for the first time”
Yes, congratulations Morrow, for halving your forecasts twice, paying yourself 1/3 more and not giving to charity, let alone Australia! Take your bonuses, you deserve it.
Is Bill back from his little trip yet?
“I think I speak for all Delims”
You speak for nobody but yourself Richard.
Devastating! (rofl)
Really? I was just stating a fact.
Richard don’t like Facts… Stats are easier to manipulate from truth into lies.
Later, RIPP :)
What do you expect? He’s completely delusional, and I am sure I speak for all rational Delims.
I just assumed he was talking about the voices in his head when he said that, probably explains all the suicide attempts too.
Libs back in privatise it and lock in the failures for the next 50 years fuck all start up companies that might actually need a desent connection. The government works for it self and the private defense contractors. What more you want.
Would be great to see Telstra move its field workforce to the HFC project under NBN, then once the HFC contract finishes they all get given redundancies while keeping the whinging union off its backs.
Why does Telstra need this old lazy field workforce when it can use contractors who outperform and are overall cheaper?
Telstra tries so hard to be a dynamic and innovative company, but the old dead wood within its ranks keeps this from happening.
ah jason, a person who believe in economic theories from text books.
I’ve worked in IT for over 20 years in Australia and the worst thing to have happened was to turn telstra linesmen into contractors.
I really feel sorry for them. they get paid about $45 per job, and a bit more if they can find no fault on the line. back in the early 90s you’d have some lazy techs, in the sense they didn’t move too fast, but they were on a salary and would work with you to get a line fixed.
these days a contractor really can’t afford to spend more than 30 mins on the job. they don’t get paid for travel time, just on a per job basis. it cause so many problems.
often we now have to do an interference investigation, which takes 5 days to be actioned, and then telstra sends a reasonably competent tech with appropriate gear to determine what’s wrong with the line. the real kicker is even if they find a fault on the telstra line we have to pay by the hour for this service.
so basically telstra has gutted their staff, set a remuneration system that is a bit like 6 minute bulk billing medicine, and then when this system breaks down will charge the customer some serious coin to fix it.
but hey, the free market is always cheaper and provides a better service than the govt could ever achieve /sarc
Let me just play the smallest violin for your Jeff…
Well, another joins the rank of Dicks.
Thats a lot easier than actually addressing what he said, isn’t it ;o)
Maybe you could actually step up, be an adult and…you know…discuss it like a grown up?
I’ve witnessed both Telstra employees at work and their direct contractors…and believe me I’m no Telstra fan whatsoever, just ask Telstra’s #1 man Sydney L…
Anyhoo I digress.
But from my perspective, the Telstra employees are much more diligent and have pride, as they seem to deem this as “their job”, whereas the contractors IMO, don’t have that same personal ownership and therefore in a lot of instances DGAF…
Get in, get it done as quickly and cheaply as possible and get out…
You should see the mess I’ve seen them make of footpath’s and patch up to cut corners, rather than doing the job and performing safe and proper remediation.
Of course violin of any size or not, that’s simply my opinion.
Yes these contractors do such a superb job such as when they were engaged to re-route a 200Metre section of local cabling due to roadworks here recently.
We spent the following week connected on the local panel beater’s workshop service & they on our’s.
To be fair, Telstras internal documents regarding the copper network is such a mess, that could have been literally anybodys’ fault. The external docs (tagging etc) aren’t in any better shape either.
Lest we forget, the largest majority of exchange tech’s and cable repairers employed by Hellstra are cheap low cost sub-sub contractors.
A cynic would say, when the training funds run out, you’re sacked. What an epic make work scam, poor bastards. Reminds me of the older make work concrete roads laid circa 1929/30 era. lol
At best, employment for may be one to two years maximum as a low paid tax payer subsidized trainee cable installer. Employed only to replace last century rotten spaghetti Helstra/Optus scrap obsolete under maintained network trash to docsis 3.1 spec. After that, no redundancy to be paid as no full time job post cable install exists.
At current rate of expenditure NBN Co., will surely be exhausted of all capital funds plus the emergency relief funds by around December, 2016. Ziggy treats his past employers well, spending tax payer funds like a gushing broken fire hydrant. Something one saw in Baghdad in 2003, under the new US manager days..
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