NBN Co has finally revealed an official take-up figure for its fibre overbuild program, saying that “in excess of 100,000” premises have upgraded from fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) or fibre-to-the-curb (FTTC).
The company had long deferred questions about take-up of what is officially known as the Fibre Connect program to its full-year results announcement.
That has made tracking the overbuild program – the most significant piece of work NBN Co is currently undertaking – difficult, though not impossible, to track.
As iTnews estimated at the end of last year, take-up was likely to be in the mid tens of thousands of premises, based on regulatory disclosures.
Still, the fact the company exceeded 100,000 only around today – more than a month after year-end – puts it behind its own stated targets for the program, which may have contributed to the consistent delays in reporting numbers.
iTnews revealed in February that NBN Co had been targeting 121,000 upgrades from FTTN alone to full fibre by June 30.
NBN Co’s numbers today show that it managed to upgrade 89,626 premises from both the FTTN and FTTC footprints to full fibre by June 30.
For the figure to now be over 100,000 – and it’s not immediately clear how far over 100,000 it is – the rate of take-up is starting to increase.
The company said that over 2 million premises in the FTTN/C footprints can place an order for a 100Mbps service or more that would trigger an upgrade.
Almost 1.1 million premises are in the FTTN footprint, and about 950,000 currently connect via FTTC.
NBN Co reported total revenue for the year ended June 30 of $5.27 billion, up three percent year-on-year and within its expected range.
The company still reported a loss – $1.12 billion – but this was a 24% or $349 million improvement on last year.
Capital expenditure on IT was up $56 million year-on-year to $306 million, which NBN Co attributed to “increased software and system development investment … in continuing support of operational simplicity initiatives and strategic objectives”.
Over the past year, NBN Co also “repaid a further $875 million” to the government, “reducing the outstanding balance” of its loans to $5.5 billion.