Around 300,000 premises are expected to miss out on getting fibre to their door after NBN Co revealed a 2 percent downgrade in the technology's rollout across Australia.
In a recent presentation to NBN Co wholesale customers, sighted by iTnews, the company provided detail on the breakdown of technologies premises will receive under the Coalition’s multi-technology mix NBN, revealing a 2 percent drop in the number of premises set to receive fibre.
NBN Co confirmed 20 percent of premises will receive fibre to their door, while around 46 percent will be serviced by either fibre-to-the-node or basement. A further 28 percent has been slated for hybrid-fibre coaxial and 6 percent will receive satellite and fixed wireless.
The Coalition previously promised 22 percent of premises would receive fibre to the home. The new figures mean around 300,000 less premises will receive a direct fibre link, with the FTTP rollout likely to reach a new total of 2.6 million premises out of 13.2 million premises forecast to exist by 2021.
Around 2.9 million had previously been allocated FTTP under the Coalition's election policy. NBN Co culled ready for service dates for more than 500,000 premises across Australia late last year.
The presentation also revealed an upgrade to the proportion of premises to be serviced by fibre to the node/basement, which rose by 2 percent to 46 percent of serviceable premises.
Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull last week gave NBN Co the official go ahead to begin work on the multi-technology mix NBN.
In an updated statement of expectations released last week, NBN shareholder ministers Malcolm Turnbull and Matthias Cormann recommended the NBN transition from a predominantly fibre-to-the-premise model to a mixture of technologies, and gave NBN Co the choice of which technology to use in specific areas, to be defined on a case-by-case basis.
The ministers promised to release more information on pricing, rollout scheduling and prioritisation, service migrations and upgrade paths in the upcoming NBN Co 2014-17 corporate plan.
The company's presentation also revealed reducing held orders would be an ongoing priority, as first signalled in February.
NBN Co began beefing up its field force in February to reduce the backlog of stalled orders on its books.
Orders become classified as 'held' for numerous reasons including contractors missing appointments, technical problems and other issues meaning installations for customer NBN services fail to be completed on the first try.
It is aiming to reach a target of less than 10 percent of held order by June this year, it revealed in the presentation.