NBN Co has published an ambitious new schedule for rolling out construction for the national broadband network (NBN) to an additional 1.9 million premises in 19 months, ahead of an imminent announcement on its long-awaited re-negotiation with Telstra.
The list details 400 cities, suburbs and towns across Australia where homes and businesses will be connected to the network — or construction to connect them will have at least commenced — by June 2016. That's 100,000 premises per month.
Just over 300,000 premises have been connected to the NBN in the four years since the rollout began.
It is the first time fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) technology has been included in a forecast. It connects copper telephone lines from multiple premises to a single node that then connects to fast broadband fibre.
The previous Labor government had planned to connect 93 per cent of premises directly to fibre (fibre-to-the-premises, or FTTP), however this model was scrapped by the Coalition government in favour of a more cost-effective and faster "multi-technology" rollout.
The distance from a node to a building and the condition of the copper being used can make connections slower than those on fibre.
Winners of full fibre in major cities include Blacktown and Homebush in Western Sydney; Footscray and Werribee in Western Melbourne, and outer suburbs Keysborough, Mount Eliza and Melton; Nudgee and Ipswich in Brisbane; Macclesfield, Aldinga, Modbury and Gawler on the outskirts of Adelaide; Victoria Park in central Perth, and Mandurah to the South; and parts of Hobart and Launceston.
Regional winners include Gosford and Wollongong in NSW; Ballarat, Victoria; and Townsville and Mackay in Queensland.
Towns like Grafton and Ulladulla in NSW, and Bairnsdale and Mildura in Victoria, and their surrounding areas, will receive wireless.
NBN Co chief executive Bill Morrow said newly built dwellings were more likely to receive fibre to the premises, with older buildings better able to make use of existing infrastructure, including hybrid fibre coaxial (HFC) pay TV cables.
Mr Morrow told Fairfax Media the $11.2 billion deal with Telstra over the use of its copper network was "in good shape" and on track to be announced by the end of the year.
Confidence in the Telstra deal as it stood was the reason for NBN Co being able to announce the rollout forecast, he said.
"This assumes our agreement is going to be as we believe to be right now."
The forecast will give consumers an indication of when they can access the NBN. However, it is aimed primarily at giving NBN Co's wholesale customers - internet service providers such as Telstra's retail arm - some time to plan their retail offerings.
Mr Morrow said it was understandable some people would be disappointed they were not included in the rollout scheme or would not get the type of connection they coveted.
However, he stressed, it was more important to get the nation connected than it was to dwell on the speed of the connection.
"Whether we get one gigabit per second or 100 megabytes per second or 50MB per second, all of those are sufficient to be able to meet almost everybody's needs," Mr Morrow said.
"We need to change the conversation."
NBN Co is also due to release "fibre-on-demand" options early next year for homes or businesses that miss out on a full-fibre connection. Mr Morrow indicated pricing would be similar to that seen in the UK.
Mr Morrow said forecasts would "undoubtedly change" but he anticipated only a 10 per cent variation or so over the building out of the network.
Last month the company said it offered no guarantees of meeting its three-year plan.
However Mr Morrow said forecasting processes had been refined to more accurately reflect the various stages of the build-out and the new technologies in the mix.
"They [forecasting processes] are not perfect, but they are far better than they were, and they're advanced enough to the point where we feel comfortable giving this level of forecast."
The announcement does not include build-out forecasts for HFC and the long-term satellite service, which will be included in a later forecast.
NBN Co is planning to connect 8 million premises to the broadband network by 2020, with the company generating annual revenue of $4 billion.
It must deliver this within the $29.5 billion federal funding cap announced in last year's budget.
Mr Morrow said NBN Co was at the "highest level we've ever been" on a rate-per-week basis of connecting premises to the network.
"We had a record of just under 10,000 homes that we made serviceable, and that comes from ramping up our delivery process," Mr Morrow said.
The new schedule follows comments Mr Morrow made to a Senate select committee in September, in which he anticipated a faster rollout process.
