NBN Co wants 121,000 FTTN-P upgrades done by July

NBN Co is hoping to have 121,000 premises in the fibre-to-the-node footprint upgraded to full fibre by June 30, although it is unclear how closely the company is tracking against that target.

The company recently published numbers for the cadence of fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) to fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) activations in one of the regulatory documents [pdf] associated with its special access undertaking.

While the data was contained in a stacked bar chart format, iTnews has obtained the numbers that sit behind the chart - which show how many premises are intended to get an active fibre connection under the multi-billion dollar overbuild program known as ‘fibre connect’.

NBN Co has so far been cagey about releasing actual activation numbers for the high-profile program.

It has so far only touted numbers of premises that can theoretically lodge an order that would trigger an upgrade from FTTN to FTTP.

At its half-year results announcement on Wednesday, CEO Stephen Rue told CommsDay it wouldn’t disclose actual numbers of upgraders until at least August.

New targets

The bar chart shows that NBN Co built fibre lead-ins and activated services for 3000 premises in FY22, with a target to grow to 121,000 premises in FY23 and 336,000 premises in FY24.

The FY23 and FY24 targets are lower than NBN Co had forecast when the overbuild program was first announced back in late 2020.

At that time, NBN Co suggested it would build 200,000 lead-ins in each of FY23 and FY24, supporting a total of 400,000 active services.

The bar chart numbers are also interesting because they extend beyond FY24.

They show that NBN Co is targeting 554,000 active broadband services on upgraded fibre lines by FY25 and 796.000 for FY26.

The figures are also cumulative, meaning NBN Co isn’t expecting to hit consistent volumes of activations on the overbuild until next financial year. 

For the three years from FY24, it expects to activate between 215,000 to 242,000 premises a year.

That cadence is consistent with NBN Co commentary that take-up would likely ramp up this calendar year as retailers finalised preparations on their end - both IT systems and marketing - to push the upgrades, though it appears the ramp-up is mostly to start in the back half of calendar year 2023.

Appears to confirm back-of-envelope calculations

At the end of last year, iTnews estimated - using ACCC figures - that the number of FTTN-P upgraders with active connections was somewhere in the mid tens of thousands; in other words, around 50,000 to 60,000.

That would put it solidly halfway towards achieving a 121,000 FY23 target.