Australia’s National Broadband Network (NBN) is to acquire legacy pay-TV infrastructure from local telcos Telstra and Optus under a revised plan agreed with the country’s government yesterday.
The group will progressively take ownership of the…
Australia’s National Broadband Network (NBN) is to acquire legacy pay-TV infrastructure from local telcos Telstra and Optus under a revised plan agreed with the country’s government yesterday.
The group will progressively take ownership of the hybrid fibre-coaxial cable (HFC) assets, as well as parts of Telstra’s copper network, in a new deal with the telcos that aims to speed up its nationwide broadband rollout at less expense to taxpayers.
Those assets had been set to be decommissioned, with customers transferred to NBN’s fibre network as it rolled out, and the original plan agreed in 2011 would have seen the state-owned venture use just three access technologies to deploy internet services: fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP), wireless and satellite.
However, the coalition government that was elected into power in September 2013 has instead pursued a “multi-technology” approach, abandoning an earlier goal to provide high-speed broadband to 93% of the population by 2019 through FTTP alone.
Despite NBN now due to own additional Telstra and Optus assets, the effective value of the new deals remains the same as those originally secured with them back in 2011, at A$11bn and A$800m, respectively.
A new timetable for the amended network rollout, which is subject to regulatory approvals, has not been disclosed.
But in a joint statement yesterday, communications minister Malcolm Turnbull and finance minister Mathias Cormann said NBN will pass about 12 million homes and businesses across the nation by 2020.
“It is the government’s policy to ensure all households and businesses have access to broadband services providing download data rates of at least 25 megabits per second and proportionate upload data rates,” they said.
“Nine out of 10 premises in the fixed line footprint will have access to broadband providing downloads of at least 50 megabits per second and proportionate uploads.”
Between September 2013 and December 2014, the government said the number of premises which can connect to and order NBN services more than doubled from 284,000 to 718,000. This includes the 48,000 premises that are able to access the venture’s interim satellite services, before its two Ka-band birds are launched in 2016.
The number of households and businesses with active NBN services is around 309,000.
The government also said NBN is in talks with Telstra and other parties over the provision of planning, design, construction and maintenance services for its new network.
Meanwhile, Telstra and Optus have said they will retain some use of the HFC networks to continue providing pay-TV services in the country.
The government hired Credit Suisse for financial advice, while Goldman Sachs was NBN’s financial adviser during negotiations with the two telcos.
