Vodafone CEO Inaki Berroeta.Credit:Josh Robenstone
“Ultimately the ones that have big market share grow their market share and the NBN for one reason or another has made the life of new entrants or smaller players quite complicated,"he said.
Telstra chief executive Andy Pennrecently criticised the NBN Co's wholesale pricing as too high,saying a Labor government might mean a more"sensible"approach would be taken to the costs and warned its profit margins were heading to zero.
However,Mr Berroeta said if the NBN needed to be cheaper but the payments to Telstra were expensive"it's not simple"and it was"interesting when Telstra is saying the NBN needs to be cheaper but they are making $2.5 billion per year out of the NBN".
The NBN Co has paid Telstra for the infrastructure it took over,for customers and for access to ducts and pits.
"Ultimately,they were the ones that set the value of the asset. It looks to me like a bit of inconsistency that now they say that there needs to be a write-down,"Mr Berroeta said.
A spokesman for Telstra said the payments from NBN Co"do not make up for the impact of the NBN rollout on our business".
"If the NBN Co had not reached an agreement with Telstra it would have had higher build costs resulting in more pressure on prices,"he said.