NBN Co has awarded contracts with a total value of approximately $183million over 19 months to Visionstream Pty Ltd and Service Stream Ltd to provide additional rollout capacity and support a new approach to the management of fibre deployment in new estates.

Visionstream has been awarded a contract with an estimated value of $102million for the design and construction of fibre in new developments in Victoria and Queensland, while Service Stream has been awarded a contract with an estimated value of $81 million for contracted works in NSW, South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory.

Based on an improved understanding of the market and industry feedback, NBN Co has structured these contracts to help accelerate construction across the different rollout segments – construction of the local network through the streets in new estates, development of local fibre nodes to which services will be connected, and construction of the major links between new developments and the rest of the network (transit links).

NBN Co chief executive Mike Quigley says the changes are designed to leverage and to more closely align the greenfields rollout with construction processes in the remainder of the rollout to existing premises.

“There is no doubt that the fibre rollout in new developments is a massive undertaking and one of the biggest challenges for NBN Co. We have received requests from developers for works covering 123,000 lots in almost 2400 locations since we assumed responsibility as the provider of last resort less than 18 month ago.

“Up until now we have contracted out the management of the end-to-end process of the rollout of fibre to new estates. This made sense at the time as we had no existing network to connect new customers to. Each application had to be designed and built individually. Now we have brownfields rollout work underway in every state and territory and we are working to complete the national transit network over the next three years.

“The timing is now right to move to a different structure that gives us greater flexibility, control and potential synergies with the wider brownfields rollout.

“We have been working closely with developers to ensure they are well informed about our progress in working to meet their needs. We are pleased with the high level of support they have shown for the rollout, particularly the way they see the NBN as a means of promoting their estates as getting ready for the technology people will need for the future,” Mike says.