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Australia’s national broadband network must scrape together as much as A$26.5 billion to complete the rollout.
Government cash for Australia’s NBN will run out at the end of June 2017, which means the state-owned broadband provider needs to raise up to A$26.5 billion (€17.26 billion) in private financing in order to fully fund its nationwide deployment.
The government has committed A$29.5 billion in public money to NBN. In its budget for fiscal 2016-2017, published on Tuesday, the government revealed that the final A$8.83 billion of that money will be paid in the coming financial year, which ends on 30 June 2017.
However, the final cost of the NBN deployment is projected to be A$46 billion-A$56 billion. It aims to connect 8 million premises by 2020, by which date it forecasts annual revenue of A$4 billion.
"NBN is expected to raise debt from external markets of between A$16.5 billion and A$26.5 billion (with a base case of A$19.5 billion) to complete the rollout of the network," said the government, which admitted that additional interim funding could be required "in the event that NBN is initially unable to raise the necessary debt on acceptable terms."
It is also worth noting that the budget’s risk statement accounts for the cost of cancelling the NBN deployment.
"In the event of a termination of the National Broadband Network rollout," the government is committed to providing "sufficient funds to NBN to meet its costs arising from that termination," the government said.
Those costs were estimated at A$9.4 billion as of 29 February.
NBN will be under pressure to scrape together at least enough cash to ensure that a potential government bail-out further down the line will be more attractive than scrapping the project altogether.
