One-third of premises passed by NBN can't get service

More than a third of existing premises passed by NBN fibre remain unable to order retail NBN services, NBN Co disclosed in its unaudited Q3 accounts.

As of the end of last month, the NBN had passed 512,659 premises, the results show. But 36% of brownfield sites - or existing premises rather than new buildings - cannot order the service due to a dearth of fibre lead-ins and connection boxes.

To address the issue, NBN Co said it has instructed contractors to build lead-ins and connection boxes at the same time as fibre is being laid to the street, instead of waiting until afterwards.

NBN Co's new CEO Bill Morrow said the change in construction model is aimed at increasing the number of premises that can more easily connect to the NBN when it becomes available in an area.

"The primary focus for [NBN Co's] management has been on building the network rather than connecting families and businesses," he said. "We need to do both and we need to do them better."

The results show that the company generated an operating loss of $1.117 billion for the first nine months of FY14, after revenue of $69.8 million.

As of the end of March, the NBN project's total capital expenditure to date reached $4.9 billion, and its operational expenditure was $2.4 billion.

NBN Co activated 11,673 fixed and wireless broadband services during the March quarter. The company said it has now completed 113 of its planned 121 points of interconnect, and 80% of the core transit network has been built.

The company also reported that it is making progress with the transition to a multitechnology rollout model. Negotiations with Telstra are progressing well, and pilot trials of both fibre-to-the-building (FTTB) and fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) are underway.

Image courtesy of Stephan Ridgway under CC