TIO board shake-up sees ex-iiNet CTO join

Former iiNet and Internode CTO John Lindsay will sit on the board of the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) next year.

John Lindsay.

Lindsay joins as the board’s “director with industry experience”, one of three board roles the TIO had been recruiting for since September.

He will replace long-standing TIO director Iain Falshaw, who is retiring from the position.

Lindsay told iTnews he’d “had an interesting career in ISPs that became telcos, and was an early supporter of the NBN”.

“Helping guide the TIO during this time of enormous resulting change is one way I can give something back to that industry,” he said.

Lindsay joins the TIO board at a time when iiNet – under the guidance of its new owner, TPG – saw customer complaints jump 50 percent in just one year.

Complaints about the NBN are also rising though “the rate of growth is lower than the growth of active services” on the network, the TIO has said.

In addition to Lindsay, the TIO appointed Professor The Hon. Michael Lavarch AO as an independent director with not-for-profit governance experience, replacing the retiring Philippa Smith.

Lavarch is perhaps best known as Australia’s former Attorney-General, a role he held from 1993 to 1996.

In other board changes, Catriona Lowe’s tenure has been extended, while two other board positions – which had been held by ACCAN’s Teresa Corbin and former VHA head of public policy Bradley Kitschke – “will cease to exist in February 2017”, the TIO said.