NBN contracts handed out

Telco giant Telstra and national contracting companies Service Stream and BSA have been awarded contracts for the building and maintenance of the national broadband network (NBN).

nbn co, the company building the network, announced today two separate agreements with Telstra, one of which is a memorandum of understanding  for design, engineering, procurement and construction management of the network, with the agreement likely to be finalised in early 2016.

The other agreement is for the operation and maintenance of the network, including repairs to the copper network and connecting new services on the NBN.

Separately, four-year contracts have been awarded to Service Stream and BSA for operations and maintenance of the NBN.

The work will involve fixing faults and connecting new services on the NBN for the fibre-to-the-node(FTTN), fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP), fibre-to-the-basement (FTTB) and HFC technologies once a customer has migrated to the NBN.

Telstra expects to generate about $80 million in revenue from the contracts in the first year alone.

nbn chief executive Bill Morrow said the company was gearing for the next stage of exponential growth, building on the now 1.7 million premises ready for the service and the 700,000 homes and businesses that are actively using the NBN.

“To optimise the network build and provide access to an excellent service for Australians, united partnerships with the construction and telecommunications industry are a key priority,” Mr Morrow said.

Telstra’s memorandum of understanding with nbn includes an agreement to undertake early works to support the build of the nbn network in the hybrid fibre-coaxial (HFC) footprint, while the contract is negotiated.

“This will include preparing Telstra nbn exchange locations and HFC planning and design work,” Telstra said in a statement.

If the negotiations are successful, Telstra will become a partner in managing the design and build of a large portion of the HFC network, which is estimated to cover about 34 per cent of the national NBN footprint.

nbn is also discussing a ‘shared management approach’ with both Telstra and Optus for their respective networks.