Senator the Hon Mathias Cormann

The Government has today issued an updated Statement of Expectations to NBN Co, confirming the recommendations made by the company in its Strategic Review to deliver broadband upgrades sooner, at less cost for taxpayers and more affordably for consumers.

The updated Statement confirms that the company should continue the NBN rollout using an optimised multi-technology model proposed in the Strategic Review.

The multi-technology model will save the NBN Co $32 billion in delivering badly needed broadband upgrades throughout the country.

The Government's investment will be capped at $29.5 billion, with the balance of the $41 billion project to be funded by the private sector.

This approach is consistent with the Government's policy objectives of providing download rates (and proportionate upload rates) of at least 25 megabits per second (Mbps) to all premises and 50 Mbps to 90 per cent of fixed line premises as soon as possible.

NBN Co will also prioritise areas identified as poorly served by the Government's Broadband Availability and Quality Report to the extent commercially and operationally feasible.

The Strategic Review found that prioritising areas would mean that they would, on average, receive upgrades two years sooner than would otherwise be the case. The technologies to be used in completing the NBN include fibre to the node/basement/ distribution point (FTTN/FTTB/FTTdp), fibre to the premises (FTTP), hybrid fibre coaxial (HFC), fixed wireless and satellite.

The technology utilised by NBN Co in each locality will be transparent to the community.

The Statement of Expectations provides NBN Co with the flexibility and discretion in operational, technology and network design decisions.

The Statement of Expectations can be viewed in full at: http://www.communications.gov.au/broadband/national_broadband_network/