NBN Co commits millionth premise to rollout plan

NBN Co has exceeded the million mark in terms of the number of premises currently covered by its network designs.

The company said in a blog post that the "major milestone" in its planning came with the aid of software from a "commercial mathematics" firm that NBN Co had been taking advantage of since 2010.

The software is specifically targeted at streamlining the roll out of fibre optic networks.

NBN Co said that it had gotten the design of fibre serving area modules (FSAMs) down to "about 20 days", rather than the 145 days it took "with traditional manual design methods".

The network builder uses a variety of metrics to communicate the progress of the build.

NBN Co said that construction had been "commenced or completed" at 784,592 premises by the end of 2012, exceeding corporate plan targets.

It also reports a different progress statistic, "premises/lots passed". It hopes to have passed 661,000 premises across all access technologies by the end of June this year, including 286,000 premises in brownfields fibre areas, and 55,000 in greenfields. (pdf)

NBN Co also provides a rolling monthly report on the date that FSAMs under construction are expected to be declared ready to carry a retail internet service.

Critics such as Opposition communications spokesman Malcolm Turnbull maintain the premises passed statistic, along with one on the number of active connections (i.e. those used to carry a paid-for internet service) are the most useful for determining the network's progress.

NBN Co periodically reports activated premise numbers.