NBN Co: On track to meet our targets
Rolling out the NBN remains a huge challenge but we’re now on track to meet our end of year targets
One of the biggest historical problems for NBN Co has been our consistent failure to meet our targets – both operational and financial – but I am very proud to say that thanks to an incredible effort by all of our staff we are about to make history.
Our half-year results show we are well on track to meet our end of year targets of 1 million serviceable homes, nearly half a million end-users and $150 million in revenues and as Chief Financial Officer I am thrilled by that.
On firm ground
Our great effort for the first half of the year is critical in setting us up very well for the transition to the Multi Technology Mix (MTM) which will really pick up steam this year as we look to deliver fast broadband to Australians more quickly and at least cost to taxpayers.
Here is what we have done in 1H FY15…
- Increased revenues to $64 million – nearly trebled from $22 million in 1H FY14.
- Driven up serviceable premises by 35% to reach 748,000.
- Lifted the number of premises activated by 112,000 to reach 322,000.
- Increased overall subscriber ARPU by $3 to reach $39 per month
These achievements are not just crucial for our confidence they are crucial for our Retail Service Providers and the Australian people to have confidence in us and our ability to do the job at hand.
Moving to the MTM
As many people will be aware the last half-year has been an extraordinary time at NBN Co – there has rarely been a dull moment.
Not only have we renegotiated our agreements with Telstra and Optus but we have also connected our first trial customers on the Fibre-to-the-Node (FTTN) network.
Whilst doing all that we have been optimising the Fibre-to-the-Premises rollout and making sure that when we run fibre down a street that we can actually connect homes – the percentage of un-connectable Service Class 0 homes on the FTTP network is now just 17% - a year ago it was 31%.
What’s more we have increased our rolling 12-week average run rate for premises serviceable per week to 8,900 at end-December – up from 5,670 in December 2013 – and have since increased that even further to 10,200 per week by mid-February.
We have continued to make progress on bringing our Fibre-to-the-Building services to market, have significantly expanded our extraordinary fixed-wireless network – doubling our footprint over the last year - and moved closer to launching our game-changing satellites.
The Next Step
Whilst things are clearly moving in the right direction we recognise we still have a significant task ahead of us to meet our long-term goals of universal broadband access to every Australian by 2020 and annual NBN Co revenues of $4 billion.
However, if we can continue to work with the same careful intensity that we have these last six months then I am confident we can hit our most important target of 8 million happy homes on the NBN by 2020.
