NBN Breaking News: No new HFC connections for several months

NBN Breaking News: No new HFC connections for several months

From 7pm AEDST Tuesday 2 February, NBN says they will not be accepting new orders from NBN retailers for HFC customers and they expect this to last for several months.

NBN says that this decision will not affect the more than 1.9 million HFC premises already connected to the nbn, and they will also be making provisions for vulnerable customers.

This will not affect new customers connecting to the nbn via technologies other than HFC.

According to Australia’s leading source of Telecommunications industry news Commsday:

NBN Co first flagged the impending shortage with Retail Service Providers (RSPs) early in December 2020.

It told RSPs this morning that it”s supplier, understood to be Commscope, “has been unable to secure sufficient chipsets supplies to fulfil its commitments, and on Thursday 28 January 2021 issued NBN Co with a Force Majeure Event notification to this effect.”

CommsDay understands that Broadcom is the chipset supplier for the Network Termination Devices [NTDs].”

This means if you’re moving into a home or office that is connected to the NBN via HFC Cable and the connection hasn’t been activated by anyone before … you’ll have to wait several months to be connected.

What also happens quite often is people who rent homes move out and take the HFC NTD with them because they think they own it (they’re wrong) or they sell it to people who think they keep it as a spare (pointless as an HFC NTD is tied to work at a particular address). As an example below these 3 listings on Gumtree today are selling NBN NTD’s they don’t own.

What it sounds like is that NBN has realised their supplier can’t send them any more of the black Arris NTD’s needed to connect to HFC NBN for several months, so they have kept some spare for existing customers who need a replacement NTD and vulnerable customers who need a new connection.

NBN says that they:

Apologise to new customers that may be affected by this global supply chain issue and the anticipated delays. While this issue only affects a small number of potential customers … we appreciate that for those customers yet to connect to the nbn HFC network, this is frustrating.

If you haven’t been connected to the nbn™ network yet, your premises is served by HFC technology and you wish to learn more about how this situation will affect your premises, please check your address from Wednesday 3 February.

Michelle Rowland MP (Shadow Minister for Communications) responded to the news by saying that HFC NBN was an expensive dud:

Do it once, do it right and do it with fibre – had the Coalition followed this advice, the nation would have a faster and more reliable NBN, at less cost to the Australian taxpayer.