NBN Co offers to upgrade up to 6000 FTTN customers from this month – Telco/ISP

NBN Co intends to take as many as 6000 orders for upgrades from fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) to fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) this month as its $2.9 billion program shifts into a trial mode.

iTnews has confirmed that internet retailers will be able to place orders for around 6000 premises from tomorrow (November 9).

The trial will now also be extended to run through until March 14 next year and encompass around 25,000 premises.

The exact number of FTTN premises that are converted to full fibre will demand how many of the 25,000 trial spots are filled.

Chief operating officer Kathrine Dyer said that NBN Co had so far “rolled out 3100 kilometres of new fibre in neighbourhoods around the country” under the upgrade program.

This is enough to ultimately serve up to 17,000 premises in parts of metropolitan and regional NSW, Queensland and South Australia, she said.

Once the trial period finishes in March 2022, Dyer said NBN Co would open up orders from all retail providers.

It is unclear which suburbs and internet providers are participating in the trial phase. Dyer urged customers to individually sign up for updates on the NBN Co website.

The release of the trial numbers coincided with another 200,000 premises being added to the fibre upgrade designs.

NBN Co also released its first quarter financial results, recording $1.25 billion in total revenue and earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA), after subscriber costs, of $714 million.

It also said that in the three months to September 30, it “raised a further $1.8 billion in bank and capital markets debt and repaid an additional $2.3 billion” of its government loan, taking the outstanding balance down to $10.9 billion. 

Just after the quarter finished, it raised an additional US$2 billion (A$2.755 billion).