Ventia lands $134m NBN fibre contract

Ventia has joined the list of contractors signed to deliver NBN Co’s final tranche of works under its overbuild of the fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) and fibre-to-the-curb (FTTC) footprints.

In an announcement to the ASX [pdf], the company said it expects the contract to be worth around $134 million over the next two-and-a-half years.

The work, which comes under NBN Co's Fibre Connect program, will help extend fibre to communities in Queensland, NSW, Victoria, Tasmania and Western Australia.

Works will commence this month,.

Ventia joins four other companies recently awarded new Fibre Connect construction contracts.

In July, NBN Co told iTnews that contracts had been awarded to Enerven Energy Infrastructure, Genus Services, UGL, Downer EDI, and Service Stream, and at the time said further announcements would be made.

The construction contracts form “the final 500,000 of the 1.5 million premises within the Australian government’s $2.4 billion investment” in the overbuild.

Premises able to upgrade to full fibre are expected to be announced during the 2024 financial year, the company said.

The work will take the NBN’s eligible FTTN-to-FTTP footprint to around 3.5 million premises, along with approximately 1.5 million customers that the company had already announced would get FTTC upgraded to FTTP.

NBN Co first announced that half of its network would get FTTN in 2020.

Take-up of the fibre offer - which requires customers to order a service of 100Mbps or more, and keep it for at least 12 months - is anticipated to ramp up in the back half of the year, after being lower than expected so far.