He took over the role in .

Mazerski has a background in economics and has been in the telecommunications industry for 20 years. He spent most of his career in North America and was a long-time employee of AT&T.

One of the reasons he decided to take on the Primus job in Australia was because of the NBN. But while he agreed with the creation of a ubiquitous open access network, Mazerski is opposed to how the Government and NBN Co plans to achieve this goal.

Under current arrangements, NBN Co will be rolling out fibre to 93 per cent of Australian premises while the rest will be serviced by wireless and satellite. Having struck an $11 billion deal with NBN Co, Telstra will gradually migrate customers onto the NBN and eventually decommission its extensive copper network. Optus has also signed a similar agreement worth $800 million.

With copper being phased out, consumers that want a fixed-line broadband connection will eventually have to use the $36 billion fibre network.