There's likely to be a hullaballoo over these figures. But if things stay on track, NBNco will be having the last laugh in six month's time. Credit: Rodolfo Clix, file photo (www.sxc.hu)

NBNco has release its mid-financial-year rollout progress statistics for 2012-2013. They generally show that the rollout is on track although the information is skewed in that progress in the first six months of the financial year was always going to be slow and steady in contrast to the second half (Jan-June) where progress is scheduled to ramp up dramatically.

As such, to the untrained eye (and to the attacking politician), the new numbers don't look too impressive. But context and background information is important - little of which is likely to get mentioned in mainstream media over the coming days.

Recent history suggests there's likely to be plenty of political fallout and complaining about the 'slowness' of progress. In reality, the non-linear nature of the ramping up of the rollout reflects planning, training, tooling, preparation and early-infrastructure hub emplacement. Now that many of these rollout facets have matured, the business of 'getting the job done' can escalate.

It's in six months that the real measure of success will be seen.

NBNco recently received criticism for only announcing the stats for "Premises commenced or completed" - a rather vague measurement of progress. However, criticism was largely political: NBNco has always used three different metrics for rollout progress measurement: Premises Passed, Premises activated and the above.

The new figures give updated results to all three metrics which should at least curtail interminable political arguments over which scale is best used to measure progress.

As can be seen on the green graph below, there is plenty of scope for criticism on rollout rate not having increased significantly over the past six months. However, it also shows that rollout rate will start to escalate rapidly from the end of this month. So, assuming that the NBN rollout stays on track, the news will be much better by the end of the financial year.

NBN Co CEO, Mike Quigley, said: "The results reflect progress in the early stages of the rollout, and are what we would expect given the time and work necessary to put in place the contracts and agreements needed to get to this point of execution.

"As can be seen by our targets, this rollout is not a linear progression, but a rapid ramp-up. We are targeting to pass more premises in the final quarter of the financial year than we will have passed in the entire project up to the beginning of that quarter. Additional construction resources will be added over the coming months to help achieve these targets."

NBNco's contractors themselves believe they are getting so efficient at rolling out the NBN that they will be exceeding expectations by the middle of 2013. If this pans out then the NBN will have built up a hefty head of steam going into the next election.

According to the release:

The number of homes and businesses using the National Broadband Network increased from 13,600 in June 2012 to 34,500 at the end of December 2012, according to year-end figures released today by NBN Co.

The figures encompass end users across the fibre, fixed-wireless and satellite services.

Of these, 10,400 were connected via fibre in both built-up areas ("Brownfields") and new developments ("Greenfields"). The number of active Greenfields premises increased from 500 in June 2012 to 3,800 in December 2012.

Fibre has now passed 46,100 premises in Brownfield areas and 26,300 lots/premises in Greenfield estates.

The company's Corporate Plan has set a target of 286,000 Brownfields premises passed and 44,000 Brownfields premises activated by the end of June 2013.

The release of the six-monthly figures follows the announcement earlier this month that NBN Co had exceeded its Corporate Plan target for work commenced or completed in Brownfield fibre areas covering 758,000 homes and businesses by the end of 2012. Construction was commenced or completed for 784,600 premises by end December 2012.