NBN Co awards fibre works to Downer EDI

NBN Co has awarded another two-year rollout contract to Downer EDI to bring fibre optic cabling to 300,000 homes in Brisbane and Melbourne.

The contract covers design and construction of local and distribution networks and appeared to have been agreed to before caretaker mode rules kicked in, which require NBN Co to stop committing to build contracts in the weeks leading up to the election.

In addition, Downer EDI has also picked up a small amount of work in some fibre serving area modules (FSAMs) in Western Australia, iTnews confirmed with an NBN Co spokesman this morning.

Downer EDI already has a fibre contract in northern NSW, and another contract to connect multi-dwelling units (MDUs) to the NBN in NSW and Victoria.

At the company's full year results presentation this morning, Downer EDI CEO Grant Fenn told financial analysts that he expected to avoid the types of cost overruns and other problems encountered by existing NBN construction partners.

"We're pretty happy with ultimately where we've got to on contract formation and pricing," Fenn said.

"We're not hearing complaints out of our subcontractors.

"We weren't in the first round [of NBN contracts] and we were late into the second round. You can take from that that our pricing was a little higher than where it had been."