NBNco releases conceptual fibre wholesale plans

NBNco has released a consultation paper detailing a conceptual wholesale framework for the predominantly fibre National Broadband Network (NBN).

The company is charged with rolling out the Federal Government’s $43 billion NBN over the course of eight years. While the proposed network will involve wireless and satellite technologies, the consultation paper deals with fibre-to-the-premise (FTTP) wholesale services only.

In the document, NBNco outlines its aim of offering wholesale Layer 2 services in a bid to stay out of the retail market.

Independent ISPs will be free to develop their own Layer 3 services, such as IPTV.

The NBN’s fibre points of interconnect (PoI) are also discussed in the paper. According to NBNco, locations of PoIs will be determined by existence or likely emergence of contestable backhaul options in order to facilitate an appropriate level of retail competition.

For densely populated locations, one PoI will be established for each service area while smaller regional areas are likely to get a PoI to aggregate a number of areas. The placement of PoIs is yet to be decided.

Layer 2 wholesale services will be offered as either Local Ethernet Bitstream (LEB) or Aggregated Ethernet Bitstream (AEB).

LEB is a direct connection between the PoI and end-user premise mainly in capital cities and regional centres while AEB is done through an aggregated link for rural towns and some regional areas.

There is no pricing information at this stage.

NBNco has organised two forums to discuss the consultation paper in January. The events will address questions submitted to feedback@nbnco.net.au and be held in Sydney on January 20 and in Melbourne on January 29.

Interested wholesale customers and industry representatives can register to attend the event at www.nbnco.com.au.

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