Engineer Enea: NBN roll-out on track, but will cost more than anticipated

NBN Co has released its updated 2016 Corporate Plan, which shows the project is on track – although it will cost more than the planned $41 billion.

According to NBN Co, it will deliver high-speed broadband to all Australian homes and businesses by 2020.

While the company claimed that using a mix of technologies to complete the NBN will cost less than an all-fibre-to-the-premises approach, the latest corporate plan shows the NBN will cost between $46 billion to $56 billion, rather than the budgeted $41 billion.

Communications and Finance Ministers Malcolm Turnbull and Matthias Cormann blamed the cost blow-out on previous management of NBN Co, who they claimed did not accurately account for construction costs, saying that the cost to connect each premises via FTTP was actually more than $1000 than initially claimed.

Additional costs came from the need to expand the workforce, and also switching users from Optus and Telstra networks.