NBN Co fires starting gun for network vendors

Federal Government-funded National Broadband Network company (NBN Co) has requested networking equipment vendors provide it a statement of their capabilities in preparation for the build out of a $43 billion fibre-to-the-home (FttH) national network.

The company posted an advertisement in The Weekend Australian on Saturday December 5, to inform networking vendors that it would be releasing a Request for Capability Statement by 5pm Monday December 7.

Companies can register for interest here.

"We want to receive Capability Statements from experienced suppliers of Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) and related active equipment to support the deployment of a point-to-point and gigabit passive optical (GPON) network," the company's advert said.

NBN Co said the request from networking companies would be the first of several it will seek "so [it] can fairly select the right partners."

The company has also confirmed that a formal RFP (request for proposal) process would follow after the analysis of capability statements.

Interested parties are likely to include Swedish vendor Ericsson, Japanese manufacturer NEC and Chinese vendor Huawei.

Alcatel-Lucent will also have a good showing with NBN Co CEO Mike Quigley and CFO Jean-Pascal Beaufret both former executives from the company.

Networking vendors have only until 5pm on Monday December 21 to write and submit an electronic response to NBN Co's request.