The National Broadband Network raked in $181 million in revenue in the three months to the end of September as takeup of the network continues towards completion of the rollout by 2020.
NBN Co, the company building the NBN, released its Q1 FY2017 financials on Tuesday showing that the $181 million in revenue for the quarter ended 30 September this year represented an increase of 148% against the first quarter revenue of the previous financial year.
NBN Co CEO Bill Morrow says the “strong” quarterly results demonstrated “continuing momentum and further ability to scale the business” and to leverage the multi-technology mix (MTM) to bring broadband access to more Australians.
The financials showed that in the first quarter of fiscal 2017, NBN Co added another 338,000 premises to the NBN footprint which are able to order an NBN service.
{loadposition peter}An additional 338,000 premises are now ready for service, bringing the total to 3.2 million and there was an addition of 280,000 active end users in the quarter for a total of 1.4 million.
NBN Co says the increase in premises ready for service has gained traction through Fibre to the Node (FTTN) network construction efficiencies with more than one million homes now able to order an FTTN or Fibre to the Basement (FTTB) service.
FTTB and FTTN were introduced in February and September 2015, respectively, which NBN Co says now demonstrates the significant pace of scale achieved through these technologies.
With the Multiple Technology Mix (MTM) model now in place, NBN Co says the rollout continues to accelerate, with the recent addition of more than 67,000 homes and businesses to the footprint in a single week.
Morrow says the MTM foundations have now been put in place, with all major contracts signed, and associated systems and processes “now built for speed”.
“The latest technology to launch, HFC, will start to gain momentum in the second half of the year, while the benefits of the fast-to-implement FTTN are currently helping drive an overall footprint expansion.
“We are now 30% complete in terms of current premises able to order a service, with the company able to bring on whole suburbs in a month due to the MTM approach. We are rolling the network out faster than ever before and we well on our way towards our 2020 target.”
Morrow says nearly one in three homes in Australia can now connect to the NBN, with a target of almost one in two by the end of the June.
“We have recently seen some well-known brands announce their intention to offer retail services over the NBN network, which broadens our customer base and, importantly, increases the offers available to end users.
“We have tough targets in FY2017, but we are working closely with our delivery partners and retail service providers who are helping us scale right across Australia.”
The quarterly results show that the non-metro footprint of the NBN rollout is now 43% complete.
“Of the nearly three and a half million homes that can order an nbn service, it’s heartening that around 70% of those are in non-metro Australia,” Morrow says.
Here’s the targets for the NBN’s completion by 2020:
• 11.9 million premises able to connect to the network
• 8 million homes and businesses connected to the network
• Annual revenue of $5 billion.