NBN fibre diet for those can afford it

Presumably, this applies to those who are put down for fibre to the node connections, the default for all except those in greenfields sites, and those who will be provided the NBN via HFC or satellite.

In the plan, released on Friday afternoon, the NBN Co says: "End users with a strong interest in fibre are offered the Technology Choice program which provides end users the option to switch access technology at their expense."

This appears to rule out any chance that the Coalition government, were it to continue in office after the NBN rollout is complete — which the 2017 plan envisages as being in 2020 — will look to upgrade users who have been on FttN.

{loadposition sam08}The plan also says that the expenditure on the NBN will be $54 billion, $2 billion lower than the $56 billion that was the last published estimate.

Part of this saving is to be achieved by not putting as many users on HFC as earlier visualised; the plan says that 1.5 million users have been cut from the cable rollout and will be provided with FttN instead.

NBN Co had planned to connect four million homes to the HFC cable networks it acquired from Telstra and Optus. Now the figure will be between 2.5 million and 3.2 million homes.

Connecting to the HFC is now estimated to cost $2300 per home rather than the earlier estimate of $1800, according to the plan.

But if the earlier "option to switch access" is taken to its logical conclusion, then these users could well stay on HFC if they are willing to pay the difference.

The other interesting fact in the corporate plan is that NBN Co expects 10.9 million premises to be in the fixed line footprint by the end of 2020, but only 8.1 million are expected to be activated.

This means 2.8 million premises, more than a fifth of those who can use it, will not be subscribed to the NBN at that point. The NBN plan anticipates the income for the corporation will be $5 billion in full-year 2020.