NBN Co logs 1.35m premises in three-year plan

NBN Co has committed to start connecting another 1.35 million premises to its fibre network by mid-2016 in the latest update to its three-year rollout plan.

The update was released yesterday to coincide with go-live for the fibre network in part of Blacktown in Sydney's western suburbs.

The previous update to the three-year plan, in March 2012, brought the construction roadmap to 3.5 million premises by mid-2015.

The figure is now set to reach 4.85 million premises by mid-2016, bringing 190 towns and suburbs into the rollout schedule for the first time.

NBN Co's minimum commitment for these premises is that construction will commence. NBN Co defines this as "the phase of work in an area where contract instructions have been issued and our construction partners can commence work on detailed design and field inspections".

Opposition Communications spokesman Malcolm Turnbull has previously branded the basis of such commitments as  a "nonsense metric".

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy was forced to defend the veracity of the updated three-year plan numbers yesterday, in response to a question over whether the numbers could be trusted in light of NBN Co missing its June fibre targets.

Conroy said that recent NBN service launches in Gosford, Coffs Harbour and now Blacktown, all in NSW, were proof that NBN Co was hitting its targets.

NBN Co CEO Mike Quigley said the company is "getting on with the job of rolling out the NBN in every state and territory".

"Our plan is to deliver better broadband to every Australian over the remaining eight years of this ten-year build," he said.

A full list of towns and suburbs added to the three-year rollout plan can be found here.