NBN Co has awarded an equipment contract worth up to $110 million over five years to Victorian fibre-optic equipment manufacturer Warren and Brown Technologies.The company, which has built a state-of-the-art research, development and manufacturing facility in Maidstone, north-west of Melbourne, will provide the optical distribution frames and subracks that will connect NBN Co’s network equipment to external cabling.
The initial purchase order is for $50 million. The optical distribution frames and subracks used in the various fibre access node (FAN) sites involve sheetmetal manufacture and assembly of fibre-optic connectors.
Warren and Brown Managing Director Neil Domelow said: “This is a great day for Australian manufacturing and particularly SMEs.
“The Warren and Brown team is extremely proud to be awarded this great opportunity to demonstrate, through the supply of optical fibre products to NBN Co, our all-Australian capability which has grown from a talented team of well-travelled, determined and long-term-thinking professionals.
“We are proud to be a 100% Australian owned contributor to this far-sighted project and look forward to working with NBN Co people to provide these products and further product innovations.
“It was very difficult three years back, when the world economy was heading down, for Steve Normoyle and myself to proceed with the $5m upgrade to our facility but the winning of this NBN Co contract proves that our belief in the future of telecommunications fibre technology was justified. It is timely also to express our gratitude to the Victorian Government for its belief in our company vision and the resulting financial assistance to finish our upgrade.”
The NBN will connect 93% of homes, schools and workplaces with optical fibre delivering broadband services with speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second. The network will cover 4% of premises with a wireless service and 3% by satellite with speeds up to 12 Mbps.