NBN Co to axe millions of useless planned outage notifications

NBN users and retailers may soon get a reprieve from the firehose of planned outage notifications they receive, starting with the removal of 120,000 notifications a month for outages that never happen.

A cache of regulatory documents released late yesterday as part of the special access undertaking (SAU) shows that NBN Co is either making or contemplating significant changes to its planned outage regime.

Retailers have previously raised concerns that they receive too little notice of “planned” works, as little as one hour, as well as a high volume, suggesting underlying service quality problems with the NBN.

Users are divided on how much notice they actually need, according to an end-user forum that NBN Co convened, for the first time, as part of the regulatory process. [pdf]

That showed users really only want several days to a week’s notice for planned outages with a duration of longer than 15 minutes. 

The volume of planned outage notifications remains problematic, however.

NBN Co indicated [pdf] that a large proportion of planned outage notifications it sends aren’t for its own network activity but are instead for power outages, and many don’t wind up even happening.

The company is trialling a change to how it sources data about power outages.

Until now, it has been sourcing information from utilities’ websites and combining that with notifications it receives via API.

But a review has found the information sourced from websites is unreliable and results in excessive notifications being sent to retailers and forwarded to internet users, which is reflecting badly on the NBN.

“A review of those notifications NBN Co issues based on non-API sources has identified that the accuracy of such notifications being sent to [retailers] is less than five percent,” NBN Co said.

“There is a high level of customer dissatisfaction from the volume of planned outage notifications that didn’t occur (circa 120,000 per month), driving unnecessary enquiries into [retailers].”

NBN Co said that as of early last month, it has “commenced a pilot to stop sending non-API generated power-related outage notices.”

It is also targeting to have 79 percent of power providers interfacing with it via API by September this year.

The company is also working to more accurately understand exactly which premises are affected by a power outage, although it does not say how.

For its own planned outages, NBN Co is also set to change how it cancels and reschedules work, a process that currently generates a lot of communication.

The aim is to “eliminate 1.2 million cancellation notices per annum which have a subsequent re-scheduled outage notice, thereby reducing the communications load and the confusion to customers.”

This will be implemented in “H2 FY26” – the first six months of next year.

Fewer, longer outages

The future of planned works on the NBN may be in fewer but longer outage windows.

This was a finding of the user survey, where 64 percent of respondents favoured “longer, less frequent outages” over “shorter, more frequent outages”. 

It should be noted that this is based on the opinion of 42 respondents.

Hybrid-fibre coaxial (HFC) users will be the first to see this in action, with NBN Co trialling a longer window in which it hopes to coordinate multiple parties to complete work at one time, rather than have a separate outage for each.

This will occur under a HFC upgrade program known as the plant modernisation upstream or PMUS program.

“Historically, customers have experienced multiple outages because upgrades, fault fixes and power maintenance were completed in separate stages,” NBN Co said.

“That piecemeal approach led to repeated notifications and ongoing service interruptions. 

“This trial marks a proactive change: by grouping more work, such as network upgrades, fault repairs, and performance enhancements, with a longer window, we can deliver better outcomes and reduce future disruptions.

“If the trial is successful, nbn plans to roll out the program on a larger scale from Q1 FY26 onwards.”