On average 58,000 premises were connected to the National Broadband Network every week during the quarter ending 31 March, up from 26,000 premises at the same time last year.
NBN today revealed that by the end of March 4.6 million premises were able to order a service on the new network, although less than half those households — just over 2 million — had active connections.
The government-owned company today reported its Q3 results, revealing negative EBITDA of $664 million for the quarter (up 73 per cent from its FY16 Q3 EBITDA of negative $383 million).
NBN reported total revenue of $665 million for the nine months ending 31 March, up 142 per cent on the same period last year. The largest portion of revenue — $269 million — was from fibre to the premises (FTTP) connections.
Network charges including the company’s Connectivity Virtual Circuit charge were the second largest source of revenue, delivering $199 million, followed by fibre to the node connections ($98 million). For the first time hybrid fibre-coaxial (HFC) contributed to the company’s results, bringing in $3 million.
Although NBN has shifted away from FTTP in brownfield areas, the technology still accounts for the largest number of active users on the network — 1.03 million — followed by FTTN (678,000). (NBN lumps fibre to the building and fibre to the node into the same FTTN category in its results.)
Figures released today by the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman revealed that consumer complaints about NBN services soared in the second half of 2016, though the number of complaints per active NBN service decreased.