Published on the 05/03/2015 | Written by Beverley Head
Fewer than half of the premises with access to Australia’s national broadband network have yet signed up for the service…
When NBN Co announced its half year report recently it revealed that end users had increased 53 percent during the half year to around 322,000. But there are now around 748,000 premises that could have the network if they wanted – it just seems they don’t.
Originally conceived as a fast fibre-to-the-premises network, the current NBN plan involves deploying a slower fibre-to-the-node option for most Australians, supplemented by satellite. After trialling the technologies NBN Co said that its fibre to the building and fibre to the node products will be released this calendar year.
It has also concluded a A$400 million deal with Arris which will supply equipment for NBN Co’s HFC rollout ahead of a commercial launch in 2016.
Despite the relatively slow uptake of NBN services by the public, NBN Co says it is on target to have one million serviceable premises by the end of June and hopes to have 480,000 users.
Some of those users may have little choice. Once the NBN has been installed in an area consumers can either find a service provider and transition across, or rely solely on mobile services. Their previous landline option will no longer be available.
NBN Co has also released its Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) figures which it said rose A$3 to A$39. It claimed this was due to greater demand feeding through from ISPs which provide the retail NBN service to Australians.
NBN Co CEO Bill Morrow said that he was pleased with the progress over the last six months, and that combined with the renegotiation of the company’s agreements with Telstra and Optus, NBN Co was now “on a solid footing to enable us to deliver better broadband to Australians as quickly as possible and at least cost to taxpayers”.
Not everyone is impressed however. Telecommunications analyst Paul Budde writing in a recent blog noted how many other developed nations were continuing to invest in faster fibre to the premises broadband networks while communications minister Malcolm Turnbull had locked Australia into a “low-speed broadband solution, without any plan for truly high-speed broadband in the future”.
