Revealing its financial first-quarter results, NBN Co says it now has 1.4 million active end-users and another 3.2 million premises ready for service. CEO Bill Morrow, pictured, attributed the increase in the number of premises ready for service to progress in fibre-to-the-node and fibre-to-the-basement rollouts – part of the new MTM (multi-technology mix) philosophy ordered by the Coalition Government.
Revenue for the quarter ended September 30 was $181 million, an increase of 148 per cent against the first-quarter revenue of the previous financial year.
During the quarter, NBN Co says it surpassed 926,624 premises able to order FttN/B services at the end of the quarter, and since September 30 that number had surpassed one million.
Morrow said the MTM foundations have now been put in place, with all major contracts signed, and associated systems and processes going ahead. The latest technology to launch, HFC, will start to gain momentum in the second half of the year, he said.
“We are now 30 per cent complete in terms of current premises able to order a service, with the company able to bring on whole suburbs in a month due to the MTM approach. We are rolling the network out faster than ever before and we well on our way towards our 2020 target,” Morrow said.
“If you don’t have access to the NBN network yet, chances are you will know someone who has. Today, nearly one in three homes in Australia can connect and we are working towards it being almost one in two by the end of June (2017),” he said.
Morrow claimed the network is helping to bridge Australia’s digital divide, with the non-metro footprint now 43 per cent complete. “Of the nearly three and a half million homes that can order an NBN service, it’s heartening that around 70 percent of those are in non-metro Australia.”
Ultimate targets for NBN Co are for 11.9 million premises to be connected to the NBN, eight million of them homes and businesses; and for annual revenue to reach $5 billion.
