National Broadband Network marketing chief quits

The hunt is on for a new marketing chief for the National Broadband Network (NBN) after its first general manager of marketing, John Casey, announced his resignation.

A spokesperson for NBN Co, the wholesale telco arm responsible for the national rollout, confirmed Casey will leave at the end of May after just one year in the role to pursue another undisclosed position. The NBN Co executive team is now searching for his successor.

Casey joined NBN Co last May as its first marketing chief after a stint as head of marketing at Vodafone Australia. His departure is one of six from the company’s communications team of 52 and has raised speculation in the national press about the desirability of staying at the company in the lead-up to the Federal Election in September.

In response, the spokesperson claimed NBN Co’s attrition rate is less than half the national average and that Casey was the only senior staff departure from the communications division.

“The chief marketing officer’s role was created in order to bring structure around our communications to ordinary Australians on the significant rollout of the NBN,” the spokesperson said.

“The company itself is also still growing – we have really just made the move from a start-up to a wholesale telecommunications company and we’re only at the beginning of this monumental task of upgrading the entire nation’s infrastructure.”

The spokesperson was unable to confirm when NBN Co hoped to have a new general of marketing in place.

The NBN Co was established in 2009 as a wholly-owned government company to oversee the build of Australia’s next-generation broadband network. The NBN will connect 93 per cent of Australian premises with 100MBps fibre-to-the-premise (FFTP) broadband services by 2021.

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