NBN releases its report card for the 2020 financial year – and its straight As

The NBN has released its report card for the financial year 2020 and it says it has achieved straight As with the network build, activation targets and providing support for the nation during the COVID-19 pandemic.

NBN has exceeded its Corporate Plan 2020-2023 and FY20 build target for June 30, 2020 by more than 230,000 to reach 11.73 million premises ready to connect.

In the 12 months to June 30, 2020, the NBN connected more than 1.7 million additional homes and businesses.

By the close of the 2020 financial year the number of premises connected to the NBN totalled approximately 7.3 million.

NBN also lead the crisis response with up to 40 per cent more bandwidth also known as CVC (connectivity virtual circuit) capacity to retail services providers to pass on to their customers at no additional cost.

There was also a 36 per cent increase of revenue year on year for a total of $3.8 billion. Business revenue was also up from $475 million in FY19 to $666 million in FY20.

Monthly residential average revenue per user (ARPU) also increased to $45 – up from $44 in FY19.

“The most important thing we’ve delivered this year has been ten years in the making. We completed the initial build of the national broadband network on time so that Australians had access to secure, resilient, high-speed broadband when they needed it most,” says NBN Co CEO Stephen Rue.

“When the impact of the COVID-19 crisis became apparent in March, we worked quickly to establish an industry and world-leading response to increased network utilization, offering pricing relief for up to 40 per cent additional CVC capacity to participating internet retailers at no extra cost.

“Since the introduction of the offer, we have forgone revenue of more than $80 million in CVC capacity charges from participating internet retailers as part of our efforts to help support increased data use during COVID-19.

“This pricing relief for up to 40 per cent additional Connectivity Virtual Circuit (CVC) capacity was only ever intended as a short-term measure. However, we have maintained this moratorium on additional wholesale data charges for seven months to give internet retailers the time and financial relief they needed to adapt to their customers’ changing data demands.

“As part of our prior commitment in 2019 to work more closely with the industry, we also introduced greater wholesale bundle discounts, which included significant annual increases in data capacity for most wholesale speed tiers and, in support of the economics for Retail Service Providers, we changed the procurement model to allow them to purchase data capacity at a national aggregate level.

“To further improve the customer experience of the NBN network, we recently introduced overprovisioning of the download component of most fixed line wholesale speed tiers by 10 – 15 per cent, where possible, to assist RSPs to supply higher retail peak download speeds to customers.”

Capital expenditure declined from $5.9bn in FY19 to $5.04bn in FY20 which is indicative of the wind down of the construction activity as it reached the final stages of the initial build.

NBN forecasts there will be a total of 8.2 million premises connected by June 30, 2021.