THE NEWS WRAP: Sydney Airport given first right of refusal over second airport

Sydney Airport is set to negotiate with the federal government over the rights to build a second airport at Badgerys Creek, 50 kilometres west of Sydney.

Under a deal struck with the Howard government, ASX-listed Sydney Airport owns the “First rights over refusal” over the $2.5 billion project.

It will have nine months to negotiate terms with the federal government from the day federal Transport Minister Warren Truss issues an official “notice of intention” setting out the government’s terms for the project.

News of the proposal for a second major airport in Sydney, without the 11pm to 6am curfew on Kingsford Smith, has been welcomed by the transport industry.

“Sydney is the key gateway for air traffic in-and-out of Australia and the benefits of having two major airports will be felt nationwide,” Qantas chief Alan Joyce says.

NBN Co to speed-up deployment of FTTB to head off TPG

NBN Co’s chief customer officer John Simon has announced plans to accelerate the rollout of fibre-to-the-basement (FTTB) technology, warning other carriers not to follow in TPG’s footsteps with a rival rollout.

“If TPG can do it, then why can’t six or seven other players do it? Then all of a sudden what you find is the more commercial or lucrative sectors of the market get picked off and you end up with a Swiss cheese network,” Simon says.

“This is not just a TPG response plan. This is our plan to bring forward those revenues and also at the same time make it clear that we will respond to competitive threats.”

Nadella calls on Microsoft to develop a “data culture”

Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella has told employees his company needs to develop a “data culture” in order to compete in a marketplace dominated by cloud services and mobile devices, during his third major appearance since taking the role.

“Every aspect of Microsoft’s business is being fundamentally transformed because of data. You have to build deeply into the fabric of the company a culture that thrives on data,” Nadella says.

“To be able to truly benefit from this platform you need to have a data culture inside of your organization. For me, this perhaps is the most paramount thing inside of Microsoft.

“It’s not going to happen without having that data culture where every engineer, every day, is looking at the usage data, learning from that usage data, questioning what new things to test out with our products and being on that improvement cycle, which is the lifeblood of Microsoft.”

Overnight

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is up to 16262.6. The US dollar is down to US93.66 cents.