NBN Co sets up ops centre exclusively for business

NBN Co has set up a dedicated operations centre with 100 staff to handle business connections and fault fixes.

The company said that the new business operations centre is based at Melbourne’s Docklands and is intended to be a “single point of contact” for retail service providers (RSPs) selling to businesses.

NBN Co said last year it would prioritise business orders over those from residential users - part of its bid to eventually secure between 15 and 20 percent of its total revenue from the business community.

The operations centre appears to be the mechanism that will allow NBN Co to be more responsive to business' needs in the hope of winning them over.

NBN Co said the centre’s launch followed industry trials of services that business customers of the network will get.

This includes premium appointments, where “businesses will be able to select a specific appointment time through their internet provider based on their hours of operation, which aims to increase certainty and reduce disruption to their operations”.

Businesses will also get the services of specialist technicians trained “to work in complex commercial premises to help improve ‘right the first time’ installations of NBN equipment and the restoration of business services when faults occur”.  

In addition, NBN Co said that complex multi-site migrations to the NBN would be simplified through the creation of a “coordinated migration plan” for the customer.

NBN Co’s chief customer officer for business, Paul Tyler said in a statement that “a critical enabler to a successful business service model is the ability to perform connections and restore services over the NBN access network in complex commercial environments, which often requires the coordinated support of both NBN Co and the industry.”

“The new business operations centre provides us with the dedicated resource to help to do this quickly and efficiently,” he said.

NBN Co has set a target to connect 900,000 enterprise and government customers to its network by FY22.

Providers targeting the business sector, including Macquarie Telecom and Brennan IT, have recently cut deals to allow them to transition some business connectivity services across to the NBN.