NBN Co has revealed the cost of building lead-ins for 285,000 premises that upgraded from copper or fibre-to-the-curb to full fibre in the last financial year was between 27 and 29 percent higher than forecast.
The actual dollar figure for lead-in costs is redacted – the company has been sensitive to revealing per-premises build costs for a number of years.
But a regulated release of financial data shows the “FTTN to P cost per lead-in” was 29 percent higher than forecast – incurred for 218,343 premises, while the “FTTC to P cost per lead-in” was 27 percent above.
The document [pdf] compares what NBN Co spent in FY24 to its intended level of spending laid out in a four-year plan known as IOP23.
The main limitation of IOP23 is that it was approved by NBN Co’s board in mid-to-late 2022 [pdf], which potentially dates its forecasts somewhat.
iTnews was unable to obtain an explanation of the variance in the lead-in costs, nor an indication of whether it is trending up or down so far in FY25 numbers.
While lead-in build costs were much higher than anticipated, NBN Co indicated that costs related to the local fibre network or LFN – the portion of the overbuild network in the street – were in line with earlier expectations.
The data release does show that, at least for the FTTN to P upgrade, NBN Co tracked ahead of forecasts for the number of premises that could theoretically order an upgrade.
It also saved about $70 million in remediation costs for customers with underperforming copper lines by upgrading them to fibre, where possible.
Elsewhere, the figures show that NBN Co underspent on the HFC footprint and on its transit network compared to earlier forecasts, noting that it deferred “capacity investments into later periods where possible”.
By contrast, it overspent compared to earlier forecasts on fixed wireless upgrades, installing more than double the number of wireless cells.
The cost per upgraded site was $356,765 as a result, but NBN Co said the fast-tracked work would be reflected in lower spend in future years.
The expenditure report shows that connection and assurance costs came in much higher than expected in FY24.
More premises than anticipated connected to the NBN for the first time, and more also required a truck roll for reconnections due to higher-than-expected customer churn.
While shy on other premises numbers, NBN Co did note that “the average first-time connection cost per premises increased to $886 per premises” in FY24.
The increase here though is most likely a positive – due to an initiative that it says helps to complete connections with a single visit by a technician, aided in part by their ability to remediate more complex problems on the day than in previous years.