The telco industry lobby has moved to project more authority and boost its influence by retiring its board to replacing them with the chiefs of Australia’s largest companies in its member base.
The Australian Telecommunications Alliance’s (ATA) members voted unanimously at its AGM yesterday to make it compulsory for nominees of the board to hold a chief executive-level role with a member organisation.
Telstra’s CEO Vicki Brady has been nominated for a seat on the newly constituted board along with her opposite numbers across the sector.
The group includes Optus’ Stephen Rue, TPG Telecom’s Iñaki Berroeta, NBN Co’s Ellie Sweeney, Vocus’ Andres Irlando, Aussie Broadband’s Brian Maher, Superloop’s Paul Tyler, Macquarie Technology Group’s Luke Clifton, Nokia’s Andrew Cope and Ericsson’s Ludvig Landgren.
It seems unlikely that their nominations will be challenged vigorously.
“A board consisting of the industry’s CEOs will provide an authoritative voice for the sector at the time we need it most. As an industry, we are committed to rebuilding trust and confidence in the critical services that Australian telcos provide,” ATA chief executive Luke Coleman said.
“A board consisting of the industry’s CEOs will provide an authoritative voice for the sector at the time we need it most.
“As an industry, we are committed to rebuilding trust and confidence in the critical services that Australian telcos provide,” he added.
The board’s current chair Deena Shiff will stay on as independent chair.
The sector is currently dealing with the fallout from a string of service outages and triple zero system disruptions.
The last major one took place in September and was linked to the tragic deaths of three individuals. It triggered a parliamentary inquiry into the reliability of Australia’s triple zero call service.
Mobile operators and carriers have been struggling to regain the confidence of consumers and Canberra following the incident, but to say that the ATA’s move announced late yesterday was unexpected might be a stretch.
The organisation has existed in some form or another since the early ’90s when it was known as SPAN or the Service Providers Action Network.
SPAN merged with the Australian Communications Industry Forum (ACIF) to create the Communications Alliance in mid-2009.
From around late 2010, Communications Alliance (CA) gave itself a new mission to expand its membership base to include telco service aggregators and digital platforms.
The digital platforms it targeted for recruitment included the likes of Google, Meta, TikTok and Snapchat.
All four became members during the expansion effort.
iTnews understands that the arrangement didn’t go as smoothly as the-then CA hoped. Well-placed sources said that annual fees paid by the likes of larger members from the telco sector collectively dwarfed those of digital platforms.
At the same time, the members from digital platform operators, which weren’t subject to the codes that resulted from the organisation’s primary exertion, writing them, were getting a say in the organisation’s policy development. And all for a heavily discounted annual fee compared to the big telcos.
The situation, it’s understood, was one that some members found to be excessively inequitable.
iTnews understands that in more recent years, under pressure from larger financial members, Communications Alliance switched direction again and returned its focus to voicing the telecommunications sector.
CA’s board appointed Coleman to the CEO role he currently holds in mid-2024. Under Coleman’s leadership, early this year the ATA underwent a re-brand, changing its name to Australian Telecommunications Alliance.
When examined through the lens of company representation, the changes to the ATA’s constitution voted on at the AGM have changed the ATA’s board little, if at all.
The composition of the current board, which the ATA is currently still publishing on its website, is a near exact match for the incoming nominees.
Brady replaces Bill Gallagher who, according to his LinkedIn biography, is Telstra’s current regulatory chief.
Continuing in that vein, Sweeney replaces NBN Co’s regulatory chief, Jane van Beelen; Berroeta replaces TPG Telecom’s legal affairs company secretary, Trent Czinner; Maher replaces Aussie Broadband public affairs executive, Libby Hay; Irlando replaces Vocus company secretary, Simon Lewin; Landgren replaces Ericsson policy advocate, Michelle Phillips; Clifton replaces Macquarie Telecom policy chief Jamie Morse; and, lastly, Tyler replaces Superloop legal chief, Tina Ooi.
Embattled Optus chief Rue replaces Ana Tabacman for the carrier who, it appears, has at some point held the role of public safety director for Optus.
It appears that Andrew Cope, as vice president and managing director, Nokia Oceania, is not being replaced.
Still the move does mean that the most powerful individuals on the organisational charts of Australia’s biggest telcos will take a more hands-on role in guiding the development of industry codes that, by legislation, the ATA is empowered to create.
Arguably, with layers of management between the members and the chiefs of the carriers removed, the ATA should be able to get approvals related to its policy development approved more rapidly.
The first meeting of the new board is expected to be held early in the new year.