NBN Co has voiced its sharpest criticism of copper-based broadband to far, claiming that it must incur increasing operating and maintenance costs for those locations it cannot convert to fibre.
On Wednesday afternoon, the network operator submitted a revised 400-page special access undertaking (SAU), but its explanatory notes will be of more interest. [pdf]
These include, among other things, a whole chapter devoted to “the case for investing in fibre,” which portrays an unfavourable picture of the astronomical operational costs of copper-based services in comparison to fiber-to-the-premises services (FTTP).
Fiber-to-the-node (FTTN) fault volume averages were “about 27,000 in FY22, which is over four times higher than the average FTTP fault volume at roughly 7200,” according to the business.
According to the report, “this also resulted in higher truck rolls for FTTN (1.2 truck rolls for FTTN against 0.47 truck rolls for FTTP per 100 premises)”.
The situation is worse when looking at the entire footprint: “Over the same period, truck roll rates on the FTTN network were between 1.33 and 1.75 times greater per month than on the FTTP network.”
Because it “is more difficult to detect a fault location on the FTTN network, and often takes much more civil works and labour to fix.
It seemed to subtly advocate for either greater money or, in this case, favourable regulatory conditions that would allow it to generate enough income to support additional copper-to-fibre upgrading projects on its own.
NBN Co estimated a range of $2000 to $3000 per premises for the cost of upgrading FTTN connections to fibre, with expenses “divided 50/50 between street fibre and premises lead-in.”
It claimed that this price was competitive with earlier user-pays upgrades, where the price of an update could easily reach the tens of thousands of dollars.
Additionally, the business defended using copper rather than fibre in the first place, claiming in the chapter and in the small print that it was more cost-effective in the short- to medium-term and linked more people.
