Mr. Peter Hendrick:

We have tried to be very open and transparent with communications around the deployment timelines but equally with homes getting connected to the network. If somebody is moved or is in a different deployment area, we will be able to answer that through our call centre or through the reps, as Ms Collins described earlier. I would be happy to take any of those specific requirements and requests and we will follow up on them for the Senator. If it is related to a connection, or if somebody who has placed an order is having challenges in getting connected, sometimes there are issues in connecting homes to the network. When we arrive out to do a connection, a number of issues can arise. We may have thought there was a duct already in place from where we have our equipment, whether that is when we are going overhead to underground or going underground from a chamber. We may have thought there was an existing duct and there may be no duct. It might be an existing direct-buried copper cable, which means we have to open up the road and get road-opening licences. Sometimes we need to apply for standing new poles to connect homes. Sometimes the route we had originally designed for the connection is not available. We may realise we are coming across somebody else's land and that wayleave or right to cross is not forthcoming, and we have to think about redesigns and redeployment of infrastructure.

I will give some sense of how we have approached this under the NBP versus how a commercial operator would have approached it. In our survey and design, we capture as much information as we can in the beginning of the programme, and as we go through the programmes, on all of the connections. We are looking at what existing infrastructure is provided to those homes in terms of a copper cable. If the copper cable is an old telephone line, we need to establish if it is underground. We look at the chamber and see if it looks like there is a lead-in duct going to the home. At that stage, we cannot try to rod and rope to see if every one of those ducts goes all the way to the home and is not blocked. That is one scenario. We know we are going underground; we just do not know what remediation works might need to be done. If it is overhead, it is somewhat easier because we are already on the pole network and we know we can go from the pole to the home. However, if we are transiting across somebody else's land, even if they have previously supported it with a copper network but they are not proposing to support it with the NBP fibre network, we may have to do redesign, redeployment and rebuild infrastructure. Looking at this for the 60,000 homes we have connected, because we have done the survey and design work upfront, our success rate in being able to connect is quite high on this programme compared to other commercial operators. What we see today is that approximately 5% of homes can take greater than 60 days to get connected because of some of these challenges. We are continuously working, based on the experience we have had, to try to improve on that. Given the types of scenarios with which we have had issues when connecting homes, we use the data we have to apply the right resources. We may need to apply more surveying resources at the time of connection because we have seen a similar scenario before, or we may need heavy civil crews. Ultimately, we still have to go back to the local authorities when we want to apply for road opening licences, traffic management for closing roads, and tree trimming for running cables for connections. We need to make sure we manage a number of parts closely with the local authorities, our end contractor and the end user. Ms Collins may want to come in on some of communications with end users.