New Connections - March 2012

NBN Co's B2B gateway is now available to access seekers and allows you to connect directly to NBN Co's operational IT systems for end-to-end automation.

Activities such as service qualifications and placing orders can be facilitated directly rather than via the NBN Co service portal. You will have the flexibility to decide which operational activities and product will use the B2B gateway or service portal. It provides both retail and wholesale service providers with an opportunity to deliver an automated and streamlined NBN Co experience to their customers.

"With our current rollout plan covering 758,100 premises, the B2B gateway will play an integral part in supporting our service providers in managing high volumes of orders with minimal impact to their operational resources." Ben Salmon, General Manager, Sales at NBN Co.

The B2B interoperability certification testing process will include pre-certification testing in the B2B Sandpit followed by 2 weeks of B2B Interoperability testing.

In future releases, it's planned that the B2B Interface will incorporate billing,assurance and test diagnosis capabilities. The B2B Forum for access seekers will provide visibility of these proposed improvements to allow you to help shape our B2B processes and specifications.

Please contact your NBN Co account manager for more information about B2B certification, to register your interest or to attend the B2B Forum.

November 2011 marked an important milestone for NBN Co with the publication of our commercial Wholesale Broadband Agreement (WBA). The WBA sets out the terms and conditions for the supply of our products over the NBN such as product features, price and service levels. It's designed to operate in a complementary manner with NBN Co's draft Special Access Undertaking (SAU), which is intended to provide the overarching framework that will shape price and non-price terms for the long term. Together, they are the primary vehicles intended to deliver commercial and regulatory certainty within the industry.

The majority of access seekers have now signed under the WBA and we wanted to take the opportunity to thank you for your time and effort involved in executing this agreement. We are now in ready to move into the next phase, which is the Contract Development Process, or CDP. This is our commitment to enhance the contractual agreement based on your feedback as we increase scale on our network. We have already received some valuable feedback on key issues which are currently being prioritised for consideration. NBN Co is formalising the CDP framework and encourages your participation to help ensure we deliver the best contractual arrangements for the future of our industry.

Please contact your NBN Co account manager for more information about the CDP and how you can to get involved.

Confused by the different files available for the NBN Co rollout plan? To assist you in identifying and realising your potential NBN addressable market opportunity, we've provided a breakdown of the support information available. This covers fibre, fixed wireless and new developments.

The diagram below illustrates the planned timeline of network rollout communication activities that provide you with the details of where work is planned, underway and completed.

Summary of the Network Rollout Communication Plan:

The network rollout information is available to download from our website within the following files:

The historical footprint list is also available weekly for fibre, fixed wireless and new developments post ready for service (previously known as the Network Readiness Snapshot). NBN Co currently emails this information in an excel format directly to access seekers via a distribution list. Over the coming months you will notice some improvements to the format of this report to ensure its scalability as the network rollout ramps up. During this time we will be engaging with you to understand how we may be able to support you better in the future.

Please contact your NBN Co account manager for more information or to be added to the historical footprint file distribution list.

Download the Network rollout communication plan for access seekers

NBN Live showcases applications that could benefit from services provided over the National Broadband Network. In this month's NBN Live we showcase Glow Networks, an IT business in Brunswick utilising the high speed upload capability available over our NBN fibre network to create a new service offering for small businesses migrating data to the cloud.

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Market Perspectives shares the latest trends and insights from around the world. In the March edition of Market Perspectives we focus on comparing video viewing habits across the world on different devices.

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Our March ready for service plan is now available for download. The monthly ready for service rollout plan is released each month, covering the rollout regions that have entered design and construction within the fibre and fixed wireless footprints.

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