Telstra chief executive David Thodey says he does not know when work will resume on remediation of asbestos-affected telecommunications pits.

However, Mr Thodey said he is not concerned about delays to the rollout of the National Broadband Network.

“We won’t go back to work until we’ve absolutely got our confidence at a reasonable level about making sure it’s safe and we’ve got all the right precautionary things in place,” Mr Thodey told reporters after speaking at a Trans-Tasman Business Circle lunch.

“We don’t have a date at the moment.

Contractors doing the work for Telstra are now undergoing retraining.

Mr Thodey said Telstra was also working with ComCare to develop an independent validation process for worker training.

Work was halted on remediation of Telstra communications cable pits and ducts in May after many were found to be contaminated with asbestos that had not been handled properly.

Mr Thodey said the remediation work was done by companies with which Telstra had a longstanding relationship in working with pits and ducts and problems had arisen because of the large volume of work being done for the NBN.

He said he had seen nothing that would cause an increase in Telstra’s costs on the NBN work and said he believed a fall in Telstra’s share price was a case of the stock moving with the market.

He also said a change in NBN policy if there was a change of government would not affect the need for asbestos remediation.

The federal Opposition has proposed a cheaper, fibre-to-the-node broadband network in place of Labor’s fibre-to-the-home scheme which is currently under construction, “This is an issue that is irrelevant of technology,” Mr Thodey said.

“Under fibre to the premise we remediate more pits and ducts but it wouldn’t change it because we’ve always got to be improving and doing everything we can to create a safe environment.”