NBN Expected To Be ‘Almost 50% Complete By June 2017’

NBNco expects to activate National Broadband Network (NBN) services across eight million premises in Australia by 2020. The company only has three years left to achieve this. After missing some rollout targets in the past and amid a wave of criticism, NBNco is pulling its socks up and expects the NBN to be “almost 50% complete by June 2017”.

NBNco’s 2016 results showed that it has managed to rapidly increase the speed of the rollout with 2.9 million premises able to connect to the NBN as of August last year. The company is now confident that it will meet its 2020 goal and expects to hit the halfway mark milestone this year.

Here’s what NBNco has to say: “By 30 June 2017, [NBNco] is targeting a total footprint of 5.4 million homes and businesses. The network build is accelerating, with 277,000 homes added to the footprint last month alone. The number of people able to connect will expand to 9 million homes by June 2018, with the end of the rollout then in sight.”

NBNco concedes that there will be more challenges as it ramps up the NBN rollout and move into high density metropolitan areas like the City of Sydney.

“As the [NBN] rolls out into cities we will be met with new problems to solve,” said NBNco CEO Bill Morrow said in a statement. “We understand there will be some disruption for residents and business owners as the 14,000 people working across [NBNco] and our delivery partners complete the task as soon as possible.

“The payoff will be worth it, with universal connectivity delivering health, commerce, education and lifestyle benefits to all Australians.”

A recent report from Akamai showed that Australian internet speeds continue to be terrible. Australia has slipped in global speed rankings and this was attributed to the current state of the NBN, which uses a multi-technology mix (MTM) design instead of being mainly fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP), as it was in an earlier iteration of the broadband network.