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NBN Co CEO Mike Quigley said: "We have worked to domestically source as much equipment for the NBN as possible. However, we needed to balance costs against the preference for Australian-made to arrive at a cost-effective result'¦We have sourced a range of equipment to form a catalogue of consistent, quality components that our installation contractors can use to suit different housing and commercial building types."
He added: "We have now put in place most of the equipment supply arrangements that we need for the rollout initially, but [we] plan to go to the market as the rollout ramps up to source additional suppliers for a range of our equipment needs."
The equipment to be supplied includes internal fibre distribution hubs for apartment blocks and offices, internal cables, wall outlets, patch leads, and devices that will house the connection of the fibre from the street to the outside of premises. These components will be used by NBN Co and its contractors for free standard installations when residents and business owners order a service from their retail service provider.
Corning will supply internal fibre distribution hubs, fibre distribution terminals, internal service drop cable, internal multi-fibre cable; network termination unit patch leads and premises cable. Premises cable will also be sourced from Optimal / OFS.
TE Connectivity will supply premise connection devices, fibre distribution terminals and fibre collector distributors. Warren & Brown will supply fibre wall outlets; Madison will supply premise connection devices and 3M will supply retrofit cable pathways.
For Australian company Warren & Brown the contract is its second from NBN Co. In January it was awarded a contract worth up to $110m over five years to provide the optical distribution frames and sub-racks that will connect NBN Co's equipment to external cabling within NBN Co's network. The company said it had already hired 40 staff as a result of this earlier contract.
Corning also was awarded a contract in January 2011, worth up to $1.6b for aerial cable, splice closures, feeder cables and drop cables to connect individual user premises to the fibre network.
Under the new contract Corning will supply its 'bend insensitive' ClearCurve single-mode optical fibre for use within residential homes and high rise apartments. This, it says, will help ensure a successful deployment.
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