agrees to meet Aussie Broadband group managing director Phillip Britt for an interview, we are given the option of meeting in Melbourne or Morwell.That’s where Aussie Broadband, now the country’s fourth-largest internet provider, was born, we are told.
“I started out my working life in a local computer store, fixing computers, never went to uni … but got into the internet in the very early days.” “There was a gap in Gippsland where the minute you got 4 kilometres from a phone exchange, you couldn’t get any broadband. A lot of the farming and out-of-town areas couldn’t get it. We built a wireless phone network to cover those areas,” he says.
“They were doing the same stuff that we were doing,” Britt says. “We were starting to trip over each other; they were building towards Melbourne, we were building towards Melbourne, and we thought, ‘there’s not much point competing with each other, we should work together’.”But the two companies needed a name change.
The company listed in October 2020, and the 46-year-old Britt holds almost 6 per cent of shares, while most of the 1800 employees hold equity too.As at June 30, Aussie Broadband held almost 9 per cent of the NBN market, with about 690,000 customers, fourth behind Telstra, Optus and TPG, and running head-to-head with Vocus.
And not everyone is barracking for their success. Sydney hedge fund Harvest Lane Asset Management’s recent short position in Aussie Broadband helped its flagship Absolute Return Fund return 15.8 per cent in the 12 months to June 30.“We’re not taking any views on whether Aussie Broadband is a good investment,” fund manager Luke Cummings says. “We are interested in deals that have been announced and whether the transaction is capable of completion.
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