Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Only one in four taking up National Broadband Network service

JUST one in four homes where the National Broadband Network has been operating for more than 12 months has signed up for the lightning-fast service.

The Australian can reveal that, of the first-release sites, the take-up is averaging 25 per cent, whereas 73 per cent of all Australian households have broadband.

NBN Co has confirmed the take-up in Kiama, on the NSW south coast, is about 45 per cent while Willunga, in South Australia, is ?not far behind?. Townsville and Tasmania?s Midway Point exceeded 25 per cent.

This suggests that the take-up is lower than 25 per cent in other first release sites ? including Armidale, in the seat of rural independent Tony Windsor, and Brunswick, in the Labor seat of Wills once held by former prime minister Bob Hawke.

Nationwide, the take-up is about 15 per cent, prompting the Coalition to question the multi-million-dollar advertising blitz for the $37.4 billion network.

Opposition communications spokesman Malcolm Turnbull said the 15 per cent figure was low, given there was ?really an unprecedented spend on promotion by the NBN Co of a kind that I don?t think we?ve ever seen for a bit of government infrastructure before?.

NBN Co?s advertising and marketing budget was $11.2 million in the 2011-12 financial year, while the Department of Broadband will spend $20m on advertisements this fiscal year.

NBN Co was ?happy with the rate of activations to date?, spokesman Andrew Sholl said. He claimed that it took Britain four years to achieve a take-up rate of 2 per cent of homes passed on its fibre-to-the-home roll-out. Mr Sholl said the ?more useful metric? was for premises that had been active for 12 months or more.

He also said that the most recent statistics ?demonstrate that the ramp-up in construction activity is now well under way?.

Senior construction sources involved in the NBN say that while the rollout was currently on track, they feared that holidays, potential labour shortages and tardy council approvals would mean the network builder would likely miss its highly publicised target of passing 341,000 premises with fibre optic cabling by June 2013.

One senior executive from a construction firm involved in the NBN said that, based on the current state of the rollout, NBN Co would fall short of that target by 20,000 to 30,000 premises.

?The NBN Co is absolutely obsessed with hitting this June 2013 target of passing homes with fibre,? the executive said. ?But the program is just too tight. Everything has to go right for NBN Co to achieve it, and that could happen, but normally it doesn?t. A lot of NBN Co?s credibility is riding on hitting those targets and they are threatening blue murder if it doesn?t happen.?

Based on the new figures provided by NBN Co, the fibre roll-out passed 13,014 premises in the quarter to September 30, taking the total to 52,014 premises. This means that in order to hit its 341,000 target by the end of next June, NBN Co must ramp up its rollout operations. Of these 52,014 premises, just 6358 have taken an active service on the NBN.

Read More: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/in-depth/only-one-in-four-taking-up-national-broadband-network-service/story-e6frgaif-1226534899142

Source: http://broadbandguide.com.au/blogs/2012/12/only-one-in-four-taking-up-national-broadband-network-service/

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