It is difficult to monitor the progress of the project because NBN Co won’t disclose how many fibre lead-ins it has constructed in the first nine months of a multibillion dollar network upgrade.
Customers are discontinuing fiber-to-the-node (FTTN) and fiber-to-the-curb (FTTC) services, according to data collected by the ACCC every quarter on active services.
It is impossible to determine how many of these customers are switching to a completely fiber-based service through NBN Co.’s FTTN/C overbuild initiative, known as “fibre connect,” from their FTTN/C connections.
As major RSPs [retail service providers] sign on and also develop and refine their offers to the market, it is still early days on the sales and marketing side, an NBN Co spokesperson told iTnews. “While we are making good progress on the ‘fibre connect’ local build and making premises ready for order, it is still early days on the sales and marketing side.”
“We are witnessing excellent levels of client satisfaction throughout the connection process, and we have a healthy flow of orders coming through each week.
“As marketing activity grows, we anticipate a large increase in order volume in 2023.
We’ll be in a better position to comment on progress once we have more retailers in the market and a steady-state number of orders.
53,188 FTTN consumers with 25-50/5-20Mbps services have left the company since March 2022, when NBN Co began accepting its first upgrade orders.
They were also abandoned by about 11,674 FTTC customers with 50/20Mbps services.
During that time, NBN Co. added 11,684 more fibre subscribers to higher tiers and approximately 61,840 new fibre users on 100/20Mbps.
It is also challenging to ascertain how many new FTTP subscribers originated from the FTTN/C footprint because FTTP activations would also include new buildings in greenfields locations.
Despite this, sources suggest that there have been around mid-tens of thousands of successful upgraders to date.
