NBN Will Start Selling HFC Again This Month

Following a halt in November last year “to improves customer service”, NBN’s HFC network will resume wholesale sales to retailers on April 27.

NBN made the announcement this morning, confirming around 1000 1000 premises in Melbourne and Sydney will be available in the first round of sales.

38,000 HFC premises are planned to be released by the end of June in Brisbane, Gold Coast, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth.

“From July onwards NBN Co expects to significantly ramp up the release of HFC premises to retailers,” the statement reads, “forecast to hit around 100,000 premises per month.”

Almost three million premises will end up with a HFC NBN connection, with almost as third “ready to connect”. 370,000 have actually connected to date.

When Will You Get The NBN? NBN's "address checker" tells you when you can contact a retailer to get connected, as well as what kind of technology will be used. Read more

NBN committed at the time of the HFC halt to performing advanced network testing, remediation where needed, wholesale connector replacements, signal amplification calibration, and lead-in work.

NBN says it has undertaken “considerable work” on the HFC network, “ensuring network performance and stability has improved substantially and a better service experience will be made available to end-users.”

“We are pleased with the improvements seen from the additional work undertaken while sales have been paused on the HFC network. We expect to see an uplift in customer experience as a result of these improvements,” Current NBN CEO Bill Morrow said.

How much the delay cost NBN – and taxpayers – is yet to be revealed – but at the time of announcement NBNs own figures indicated a six month delay could cost as much as $420 million.

This followed the October 2017 ACCC draft report into the Australian communications sector – which had some serious recommendations for the NBN. It does appear that the service is, albeit slowly, improving.

Bill Morrow announced his resignation just last week, and will be leaving the NBN at the end on 2018.

“I believe that as the company prepares to confront the new challenges ahead, this is the right time to hand over the reins for the next phase of this incredible project and for me to plan for the next step in my career,” Morrow said at the time.

Our PM has been pretty tight lipped on the topic of HFC, with the Shadow Minister For Communications, Michelle Rowland, stating “there is no escaping the fact the over-budget and underperforming HFC rollout is letting Australians down.”