1.7m premises connected to NBN by 2013
By June 2013, the National Broadband Network company hopes to have rolled out fibre, wireless and satellite to some 1.7 million premises around the nation, with most of those being fibre roll-outs.
By that stage, however, it is estimated only some 570,000 premises will actually be receiving broadband services, indicating that not everyone will connect to the NBN straight away, even when it is deployed to their area.
(Credit: NBN Co)
This initial period until June 2013 is described in the NBN Co documentation as a "ramp-up" stage which will allow the company to gain lessons about deploying the infrastructure. The 'volume' roll-out will begin its straps after that period, with a full deployment rate of almost 6000 premises per day being planned for financial year 2014.
The entire roll-out process is going to be on a nine-year schedule until 2021 and will involve installing some 181,000km of gigabit-capable Passive Optical Network fibre and a further 57,000km of what is called 'transit' fibre to connect it all up.
The first five first release sites across mainland Australia are already being constructed. And NBN Co has published a list of a further 19 second release sites.
The plan acknowledged that timetables could slip if government policies aren't executed and if negotiations on the Telstra deal with the National Broadband Network company don't go to plan.
NBN Co hope to have the Telstra agreement wrapped up, including enabling legislation and approvals, by June 2011.
The planning of the Tasmanian first release sites and mainland sites also has to be reviewed because of the new, larger number of points of interconnect.
Times set out in the business plan summary released last month have remained the same except for the time when the company was scheduled to be ready for a business-as-usual roll-out, which has moved back from December 2011 to February 2011. Telstra and NBN Co have not announced the finalisation of arrangements for the decommissioning of Telstra's copper and hybrid-fibre coaxial networks, as was scheduled to occur this month.
For Twisted Wire this week, Phil Dobbie will be looking at the NBN Corporate Plan released today. Do you have any thoughts you'd like to share? If so, call 02 8006 1257 anytime between now and lunchtime tomorrow (Tuesday, 21 December), leave your name and record your message. It'll be included in this week's podcast, which is coming out a day early (on Wednesday).