iiNet pulls in 12,000 NBN fibre customers

ISP iiNet has surpassed 12,000 fibre connections on the National Broadband Network, the company revealed today in its financial year 2013 results.

The Perth-based service provider has signed up 20,000 NBN customers to date, of which 60 percent are on brownfields or greenfields fibre, it announced.

The connection statistics represent significant growth compared to a June 24 update (pdf), when iNet said it had 15,000 NBN customers, of which 9000 were on fibre.

Half of iiNet's NBN customers were "buying higher speeds than [the] 12/1 Mbps entry level product" offered by NBN Co.

iiNet CEO Michael Malone told iTnews that about 10 percent of the NBN customer base take the top 100/40 Mbps tier.

iiNet also saw good growth in its other NBN products. Fixed wireless connections rose from 400 to 1000, and satellite users are up from 6000 to 7000.

The ISP's growth in NBN connections has been rapid. It had just 2700 customers on NBN Co's fibre network as at November 27 last year, meaning it has added over 9000 fibre customers in a little over six months.

A percentage of new fibre sign-ups resulted in incentive payments; iiNet had scooped about $110,000 from 1020 connections by around the end of June this year.

UNI-V trials underway

iiNet recently commenced trials of "iiNet TV with Fetch" on the NBN, as well as a voice-only service that will run via the UNI-V port on the network termination device attached to a home.

Rival Telstra has only just launched its own voice service that runs on the UNI-V port.

Malone told iTnews that iiNet planned to offer a UNI-V voice service from around September or October this year, but it would not be offered standalone.

"For Grandma who doesn't want broadband and just wants her home phone to work, we're probably not going to be the telco for her," he said.

"From a point of view of a normal consumer, the only difference between UNI-V and iiNet's current [voice] product is do you plug your phone or your DECT base station into the modem or do you plug it into the UNI-V port? Other than that the price is the same otherwise and the cost for us to deliver is the same otherwise."

Malone said UNI-V would enable customers to run EFTPOS or fax services if they desired, but he said demand for such a service at this point is "not a big issue".

Profits soar

iiNet today reported a 64 percent increase in net profit after tax (NPAT) to $60.9 million in FY13, "exceeding market consensus".

Revenue climbed 13 percent to $941 million, on the back of strong results in iiNet's business division, where revenues were up 53 percent to $183 million.

Business revenues came in at $120 million in the previous financial year.

"[The Business] segment now makes up 19 percent of group revenues, and we are successfully capturing the latent market potential in a segment that has historically been under-serviced by our competitors," CEO Michael Malone said in financial filings.

The company now has 840,000 broadband customers across on- and off-net ADSL, NBN and other fibre. It also has 126,000 mobile subscribers.