This article is more than 1 year old
Telstra being paid to fix Telstra's network for NBN – AGAIN
Another AU$1.6b heading back to the Big T to work on a network it sold to nbn
Telstra has once again won work with nbn, the entity building Australia's national broadband network (NBN), announcing it's secured a contract worth AU$1.6 billion to work on the hybrid fibre-coax (HFC) cable broadband network to sold to nbn.
The biggest beneficiary of NBN policy of successive governments, the incumbent announced the new deal here.
The contract covers planning, design, construction, and construction management services in the Telstra HFC footprint, and follows a contract last December to redesign the network to support DOCSIS 3.1.
DOCSIS 3.1 is a key plank of the government's strategy, since it runs so fast it can't be reported by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
The contract runs to 2020, when the NBN is supposed to be completed. The new deal is separate to the $11 billion-plus sale of Telstra's twisted-pair copper network to the NBN.
nbnTM acquired Optus' HFC assets for $800 million last year, and in March said that network won't connect as many customers as the organisation hoped.
The government's multi-technology mix plan envisions around four million HFC customers. With Optus maxed out at less than half a million, the Telstra HFC will have to carry the remaining 3.5 million. ®