NBN chief executive Bill Morrow says fewer homes than previously expected will need to be connected to the high-speed internet network, with the company noticing a growing difference in the number of homes it connects compared to what was forecast based on geospatial databases.
Speaking at a Senate Estimates hearing yesterday, reported by CRN's sister title iTnews, Morrow said the issue appeared to come from a disparity in previously recorded data compared with the actual number of premises.
“I think this is a database issue, in terms of the recordkeeping,” he said. “We keep tweaking the numbers because it’s an estimate but it literally is hundreds of thousands less than what we had thought."
That disparity, according to Morrow, is likely to push up the NBN's per-home cost of connection, which currently averages $2800 for FTTC and between $2100 and $2300 for FTTN.
The 9 million homes previously expected to be included in the NBN’s rollout by 2018 looks likely to be revised.
Meanwhile, as the number of overall homes appears to be shrinking, the number of homes that are unable to be connected has more than doubled in the past six months.
The NBN added more than 19,000 premises to its footprint in the past fortnight, which the company will reportedly skip on connecting until later in the rollout.
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