Published on the 12/08/2015 | Written by Beverley Head

By Friday another 30,000 homes and businesses around Australia will have been forced into the decision of whether to sign up for the national broadband network or rely on their mobile…

That takes to around 200,000 the number of premises which have been forced into a decision about what to do about the NBN over the last year.

Australia’s NBN is currently being used by 526,000-plus homes and businesses – a significant jump on the 326,000 users at the start of the year.

But that is just the tip of the iceberg. With the first Fibre to the Node deployments expected in September, to be followed by the rollout of the HFC service next year, NBN’s current intention is to provide the foundations to connect 8 million homes to the network by 2020.

At present across the range of technologies supporting the NBN around a million homes and businesses could connect according to telecommunications business iiNet.

Besides installing the technology the NBN company this month announced that it was investing $40 million in recruitment and training initiatives in a bid to add another 4,500 people to the NBN industry workforce, taking the total to around 9,000.
It’s likely that more details – along with insights about NBN’s technical progress will be revealed at the company’s full year results meeting slated for 24 August.

The retail race to connect premises to the network meanwhile is well underway.

Singapore’s MyRepublic has this week announced its intention to set up shop in Australia as a broadband retailer, though reports in the Fairfax media suggest the company is far from impressed by the NBN’s technical specifications.

Perth based iiNet meanwhile has already signed up 60,000 customers for NBN services. According to the company’s NBN product manager Rachael McIntyre although another 30,000 homes and businesses will face a disconnection threat on Friday, the fact is that most will have already made their decision.

She said that typically within three months of the NBN becoming available in an area, the first 20 percent of early adopters made the switch. She said there was then a “wasteland” of demand with just a trickle of new orders until the threat of disconnection loomed, which prompted many more people to act in the lead up to that deadline.

However McIntyre said that by the time the cutoff date arrived there were very few people who were caught out.

She said that there had also been a shift in consumer attitudes toward the network over the last four years. Before the last federal election McIntyre said that there had been significant consumer angst about the cost of the network, whereas after the election there was instead consternation that under the Coalition’s revised NBN plans using a broad swathe of technologies – rather than a fibre to the premises focus – not everyone would get access to fibre.

But she said that today there was; “By and large an acceptance that the NBN is a good thing,” though she acknowledged that consumers generally only took any interest in the NBN when it directly affected them.