NBN Co names suburbs for next half million premises of FTTH rollout

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 18 October 2011 10:07

IT Industry - Strategy

NBN Co has released the schedule of locations - encompassing some half million homes and businesses - where it plans to roll out its FTTH network over the next 12 months.

Most locations are in regional Australia or outer suburbs of capital cities. However included in the list is Melbourne City the airport suburb Tullamarine, South Perth and the Sydney suburbs of Lidcombe, Blacktown and Homebush. The full list is here.

NBN Co CEO Mike Quigley said: "Today's announcement represents the start of a major nationwide construction effort that should eventually see us offer National Broadband Network coverage to every one of Australia's 13 million premises."

The plan names 28 new locations passing 485,000 premises where construction of the fibre optic network is expected to commence over the next 12 months. It also lists those first and second release sites where the rollout is already underway, accounting for a further 63,500 premises.

The next phase of construction will also involve the rollout of the first stage of the transit network that will connect the different fibre access nodes to points of interconnect where the traffic will be transferred to service providers.

In the first stage NBN Co is planning to construct 149 transit links connecting 155 fibre access nodes, of which 30 are also points of interconnect. The company is near to signing a contract for the building of transit services over the next 12 months. The full transit network will take three years to complete.

NBN Co says the 12-month schedule will be updated on a quarterly basis to include additional locations. Early next year it promises to issue a three-year indicative view of the rollout, which will be updated annually until anticipated completion of the rollout in ten years time.

NBN Co is rolling out the fibre network in a series of modules each of which passes around 3000 premises. The implementation schedule names only the start date of the first module in a given locality as part of the one-year plan. On average it is expected to take 12 months from the start of the fibre network rollout in a given area until individuals are able to receive high-speed broadband over the NBN.

NBN Co says that, in addition to the basic rollout information, it is providing additional data to telecommunications companies and Internet service providers "in order to help them plan their investment programs and their marketing of services to consumers and businesses in each area."