CRN, 11 May, 2018 – NBN Co saw a surge in activations and revenue for its third quarter, which it attributed to optimisation work on its hybrid fibre coaxial (HFC) network and its changes to wholesale pricing offers.
The network provider had a total of 3.7 million activations for the period ending 31 March, up from 2 million in the same period last year. Revenue meanwhile came in at $1.4 billion, up 112 percent from $665 million in the period ending 31 March 2017.
The company also said that some 6.5 million premises were ready to connect to its broadband access network, with 7.5 premises ready for service.
“These results demonstrate the progress we’re making on our top three priorities, which are to complete the build by 2020, improve the end user experience, and deliver a modest return on the taxpayer’s investment,” NBN Co chief executive Bill Morrow said.
“We’ve shown stable performance against our long-term goals on the build side and significant improvements on customer experience.”
In December, NBN Co offered a temporary credit to retailers to buy 50 percent more connectivity virtual circuit (CVC) per user, while reducing the price of the access virtual circuit (AVC) for 50Mbps services. This allowed customers on the 25Mbps plan to upgrade to 50Mbps for free.
This resulted to a six-fold growth in 50Mbps subscriptions, going from 158,959 at the end of December to 989,360 subscribers on 31 March. The plan now also accounts for 26 percent of all NBN plans.
The company said this change also contributed to reducing average bandwidth congestion across its network from six hours per week last year to 18 minutes. The network can also support higher speeds during peak hours.
“Our monthly progress report demonstrates that our customer experience program is working, and we know there’s more to do to get this right,” Morrow said.
“The NBN Co team, delivery partners and RSPs are working quickly to make improvements across the industry for a better experience for all.”
The company also relaunched its HFC network on 27 April following the launch of the fibre-to-the-curb (FTTC) network the day before. NBN paused HFC rollouts in November due to customer experience issues.
Bill Morrow announced last month his intentions to step down as chief executive at the end of this year, and NBN Co has now started to look for a replacement.
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(2018), NBN pricing changes sees customer activations soar, CRN, viewed 11 April 2018, <https://www.crn.com.au/news/nbn-activations-and-revenues-surge-in-third-quarter-490755>.