NBN Co plans to double the 210,628 active users currently on the national broadband network and the $61 million in revenue it reported for fiscal 2014 in the 12 months to June next year.
NBN Co’s full year 2014 financial results revealed the company is aiming to generate around $150 million in revenue during the 2015 fiscal year and a target of 480,000 premises activated.
It is also aiming to have 1 million serviceable premises - compared to a current 552,000 - on its books by the end of June next year.
NBN Co recorded $2.5 billion in capital expenditure on top of $1.1 billion in operational expenditure during 2013-14, compared to $749 million OpEx and $1.8 billion CapEx for its previous fiscal year.
It reported a $1 billion EBITDA loss compared to $732 million in fiscal 2013. Its $61 million revenue came in significantly higher than the previous period's $17 million taking.
"NBN Co will continue to record negative EBITDA for the next few years until substantial revenue flows from the growing [number of] end users who connect to our network," NBN Co chief financial officer Stephen Rue said.
The federal government had spent $8.4 billion of its promised $29.5 billion captial limit for the project by the end of June.
NBN Co activated just over 140,000 new NBN users in the past 12 months, reaching 210,628 active end users and 552,000 serviceable premises. Average revenue per use remainted static at $37.
Of the first 15 regions to have their copper switched off in May this year, NBN Co reported a penetration rate of 68 percent. The network has an average take up rate of just under 40 percent overall.
Users choosing higher-speed plans
Despite claims made in this week's NBN cost-benefit analysis that the majority of NBN users would only need around 15 Mbps by 2023, NBN Co today reported 20 percent of early NBN users had opted for the highest 100Mbps plan.
NBN Co Bill Morrow said he was perplexed by the speed demand conclusions put forward by the cost-benefit analysis.
“Many people would be happy with 15 Mbps per second, but I am a big believer that there’s going to be a data tsunami that’s going to hit us," he said today.
“It is a voluminous amount of data that’s going to be consumed. I suspect we’re looking at a snapshot in time rather than a prediction of what is to come.”
The government-owned enterprise also revealed it has decided to continue the 50 services currently being supplied to eight multi-dwelling units in Victoria as part of its trial of fibre-to-the-building - which were activated in March - until the commercial launch of NBN Co's FTTB product.
Participants in the trial reported average speeds of over 100 Mbps downstream and 45 Mbps upstream, NBN Co said.
In contrast, initial speed results for NBN Co's fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) trial in the NSW town of Woy Woy came in between 95-97 Mbps download and between 28-34 Mbps upsteam. A commercial launch of an FTTN product is scheduled for the current financial year.
.png&h=141&w=208&c=1&s=1)
