NBN Co risks losing up to $400 million a year in revenue if competition heats up in the lucrative urban apartment market, says telecommunications commentator and UN Broadband Commission adviser Paul Budde.
Budde said the recent decision allowing TPG Telecom to continue connecting up to 500,000 urban apartments to its network this month would open the door to other competitors and be a financial hit to NBN Co.
“You are quickly talking about revenues of $200m per annum. If this gets aggressive and more multiple dwelling units are connected by competitors, double that,” he told The Australian.
But he added that NBN Co could still claw back some of those losses with a rapid rollout of its own fibre-to-the-basement infrastructure.
The Oz notes that Telstra and Optus chief executives have said they would investigate using their own fibre-to-the-basement networks but were likely to wait on recommendations from regulatory reviews.
It also notes that Comms Minister Malcolm Turnbull has been looking into a new telecommunications licence condition that would require all fibre-to-the-basement carriers to offer wholesale access to their networks.
