NBN admits to three-month delay in fibre rollout
23 Mar 2013
Australian national broadband network NBN Co has expressed doubts over the ability of the company to meet its latest rollout figures just a day after its chief executive Mike Quigley cut the target between 35 per cent and 44 per cent.
The company has been asked for additional data on its broadband rollout after it revised down its target for June.
Quigley said on Thursday a three-month delay in fibre roll out would result from a slowdown in construction. As against the company's pledge to install fibre in 341,000 premises by 30 June, he said it would reach between 190,000 and 220,000.
As for existing homes, the previous target of 286,000 homes would be replaced by a range of between 155,000 and 175,000 premises by June end he said.
In January, Quigley told The Australian Financial Review that the 2012 forecasts were ''a challenging number to hit, (but) we have set ourselves up to have a good chance to achieve it''.
Taking responsibility for the delay on Thursday he said he was disappointed, but attributed much of the slowdown to construction companies unable to provide the workers required to build the network quickly enough.
He said essentially, some of its construction partners had not been mobilising the boots on the ground at a local level at a fast enough rate to meet their own forecasts, adding the company set targets believing it would achieve them. He said the company had acted to recover the shortfall.
The unscheduled announcement came as the Labour Party was embroiled in crisis.
Opposition telecommunications spokesman Malcolm Turnbull coming down hard on the company over the timing of the announcement amid the leadership crisis said Quigley had cynically used Labor's latest leadership crisis to "take out the trash" and avoid scrutiny of this announcement.
He said every time the NBN Co had missed its target it had responded by making the hockey stick of its ramp-up ever more steep.
NBN Co would replace its main contractor Syntheo, as it took over the construction of the broadband network in the Northern Territory, deploying its own workforce.
While NBN Co has mostly blamed on Syntheo, according to a source cited by The Australian Financial Review, all the contractors were experiencing difficulties in hitting their targets.
