NBN Co is resurrecting plans for fibre-to-the-premises (FttP) rollouts in major capital cities, in order to beat David Teoh’s TPG plans for a cherrypicking fibre-to-the-basement exercise, a parliamentary committee has been told.
While NBN Co CEO Bill Morrow this week told a Senate Select Committee that NBN Co aims to begin offering fibre-to-the-basement (FttB) services to city flats and offices by October (CDN yesterday), COO Greg Adcock later told the same committee that to fill the gap – and hopefully forestall TPG – NBN Co would offer the FttP service “in areas that have been identified as a competitive threat”.
“The most cost-effective way to deploy in MDUs is through FttB,” Adcock explained, “but there is a competitive issue at the moment.” [MDU stands, we think, for multi-dwelling units – known to most people simply as flats. -Ed.]
“The response was to go to the geographies that have been identified and speak to various building owners, and offer the product that we have available to them at the moment.”
Morrow confirmed that this would be FttP. “The product – the only product – that we have available today is fibre to the premise and that will be the product which we are offering,” he said.
– NBN Co has called a snap media conference in Sydney today at which Bill Morrow will brief the press on NBN Co’s fixed wireless and satellite review, which he says the company will use to “close the digital divide by providing better broadband faster and more affordably to rural and regional Australia”. The briefing will take place at Sydney’s Hotel Intercontinental at 2pm.
