NBN Co turns corner in SA fibre rollout

NBN Co has turned around construction delays in South Australia, posting a 37 percent increase in the number of premises passed by fibre in the space of a week.

The company's latest rollout metrics prove NBN Co's new construction partner, SA Power Networks, is overcoming delays to the fibre rollout which occurred under the watch of now-axed partner Syntheo.

Between January 5th and 12th this year, the number of premises passed by fibre in South Australia rose from 4708 to 6473.

Of the 6473 premises now passed by fibre, 5432 have "serviceable" connections while the remaining 1131 are classified as "service class zero", meaning additional work is required before those lines can be used.

South Australia had once been considered to be the hardest hit by delays in NBN Co's construction efforts.

Service class zero fluctuations

The large spike in premises passed numbers in South Australia has, however, altered what was until now a fairly stable number of premises classified as service class zero (SC0).

The number of SC0 premises as a total of premises passed was 8.6 percent as at December 8th, 2013, decreasing to 7 percent by January 5th this year.

It is now at 17.5 percent of all premises passed. However, this is still the second-lowest percentage of any state or territory.

(Graph: Percentage of all premises passed that are SC0. Source: iTnews)

The Australian Capital Territory has the lowest proportion of SC0 premises at 13.6 percent of all premises passed with fibre.

The Northern Territory has the highest proportion of SC0 premises at 94 percent, and Western Australia comes in second at 51 percent.

Syntheo had been involved in both the Northern Territory and Western Australia works: it handed back the NT to NBN Co in March 2013, and its WA works weren't extended beyond November 2013.

The reported Northern Territory SC0 numbers for January 5th appeared to be an error that had been corrected in the current set of figures.