NBN Co pays up as FTTP service levels wobble

NBN Co’s bill for rebates to its retailers related to fibre-to-the-premise (FTTP) service problems jumped sharply in the last quarter of 2025, just as its copper replacement program started to enter high gear.

Rebates that the national network builder had been paying to its RSP customers related to FTTP services had been steady since the beginning of the year, peaking at about 23,247 by the end of September quarter, according to data it lodges with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).

However, in the final December quarter of the year NBN Co reported paying 32,411 rebates related to FTTP service problems - a jump of nearly 40 percent on the previous quarter.

An NBN Co spokesperson told iTnews that in the first half of the 2026 financial year it converted 287,000 premises from copper connections to fibre. taking its upgrade total to more than a million.

However, the company conceded that some connection technology shifts in the field were proving to be less straightforward than others.

“During Q2 FY26, the increase in rebates payable relate to more complex orders received to fulfil a full fibre upgrade," the spokesperson said.

"On occasion, given the complexity of these upgrades, the time taken to complete works went beyond the committed service level."

The main reason NBN Co reported for providing credits to RSPs was “connections rebates”, accounting for 13,328 rebates. 

The next two most frequently cited reasons for paying out rebates was for missed connection appointments and “failed connections” at 8271 and 7141 cases respectively.

For comparison, rebates NBN Co was required to pay for service problems relating to fibre-to-the-node connections have dipped since the start of the year, from around 17,400 in the March quarter to 13,619 in final quarter of last year.

NBN Co has reported the jump in FTTP-related rebates at a time when it is seeking to bend the ACCC to its way of thinking around benchmark service standards.

Service levels are negotiated as part of the regulatory cycles associated with the special access undertaking (SAU) with the ACCC.

The standards are broad in scope, covering service levels across the multi-technology mix.

Broadly, NBN Co has been arguing that the regulator’s proposed standards are technically infeasible and costly to meet, coming in at around $610 million over the five years of the agreement.

NBN Co has offered an amended proposal coming in at a cost of $134.1 million over the period with one of its key areas of concern being the expense of meeting service levels on copper, especially in regional areas.

NBN Co wants to minimise further investment in copper that would drag investment away from new fibre deployments which, it argues, are inherently more reliable and cheaper to maintain.

NBN Co told iTnews that the jump in rebates for the final quarter of 2025 don’t challenge that idea.

Pointing to its own data for unexpected dropouts across connection technologies reported to the regulator, it said that FTTN and FTTC continued to be the worst performers.

The ACCC provides an indication of which connection technologies are most reliable by estimating the number of services per 1000 that unexpectedly dropout more than seven times in a month. The more that meet the threshold, the more unreliable service.

FTTN and FTTC connections remained amongst the highest number of services meeting the threshold throughout the year, hovering in a range between 40 and 60. HFC was the next worst performer in the range of 30 to 40.

FTTB was moderately better at around 20 while FTTP was the best performer with starting at 11 services meeting the threshold and dipping across the year.

“NBN Co is achieving significant economies of scale and considerable cost savings by replacing ageing copper with future-ready fibre across Australia. Fibre is faster, but importantly, it is also more reliable than copper.

"NBN Co is removing the barriers to enable more customers to upgrade to fibre,” NBN Co’s spokesperson said.