Speaking at a joint committee hearing on the NBN, Mathew Lobb, general manager industry strategy and public policy at VHA said the national network presented two major opportunities: fixed lines services and an enhanced mobile offering.

"We see that having more fibre in the ground is certainly going to benefit the wireless capability and we see significant opportunities for backhaul capability and base station backhaul top the points of interconnect and that would significantly enhance our wireless operations and that is a very important part of our participation in the [NBN mainland] trial " he said.

Commenting on NBN-related challenges, Lobb said VHA felt that managing the decade-long migration of customers to the NBN required close and skilful management, including government informing consumers of the changes and their choices.

"[The migration] will be a period of potentially significant change with over 10 million customers moving from copper to fibre and that will have significant operational and customer information challenges," he said.

"The last time something of this magnitude occurred was in 1997 with the opening up of copper access and there was a significant period of quite substantial customer confusion and that didn't lend itself to a good reputation for the industry."