NBN Co downsizes wireless, satellite footprints by 130,000 'premises'

NBN Co has removed 130,449 non-existent “premises” from its fixed wireless and satellite footprints, the latest in a series of culls required as the company has cleaned up national address records it relies on.

The company’s weekly report [pdf] revealed the anomaly, which was first reported by former NBN Co CTO Gary McLaren on his blog.

“A total of 111,636 fewer lots/premises were ready to connect during the week,” the weekly report states.

“This included an increase of 16,248 in brownfield areas, an increase of 2565 in new development areas and a decrease of 130,449 premises in fixed wireless and satellite areas.”

Breaking that figure down, 39,069 premises disappeared from the satellite footprint, meaning Sky Muster is now intended to serve 406,967 premises.

In addition, the number of premises in the fixed wireless footprint fell by 91,380 to 574,122.

An NBN Co spokesperson told iTnews that the change is due to ongoing improvements to the accuracy of address data used as part of the rollout.

“NBN Co has removed a net amount of approximately 130,000 records previously included in our weekly progress report,” an NBN Co spokesperson said.

“It’s important to remember that the records removed from the database are not actual premises. 

“They reflect improvements we’ve made to the accuracy of our address system database, including adding records for real premises and removing duplicates or non-premises from legacy databases. 

“If a legitimate premises needs to be added to our database, NBN Co will do so through our normal practices.”

It is understood that the reductions were accounted for in NBN Co’s most recent corporate plan.

NBN Co has had problems with inaccurate address data since at least 2012.

Former CEO Bill Morrow said in 2016 that the address data frequently did not match what the company found during physical on-site inspections.

The company dropped 700,000 phantom premises from its rollout in mid-2017, again due to bad map data.