Australia’s No 3 (or sometimes No. 4) telco Vodafone Hutchison Australia (VHA) will enter the NBN market this year, CEO Inaki Berroeta has confirmed. “There is a deep frustration from broadband consumers about the service they’re receiving from their existing Internet service provider, and we want to change the game,” Berroeta said at the weekend.

He added: “NBN brings a fantastic platform for us to complement our mobile services with broadband for our customers and that is an area that also we’ll put a lot of our effort into during the year.”

Berroeta was commenting on Voda’s latest financial report, for the year ended December 31. It showed a 12 percent rise in earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA).

Growth was driven largely by a 2.3 percent rise in customer numbers to 5.56 million, along with higher average revenue per user and better cost management.

Less encouragingly, the report also recorded an 8.4pc decline in annual revenue to $3.3 billion, leading to a net loss for the year of $242 million, said to be largely due to depreciation of its multi-billion dollar network investment.

On the planned NBN move, Berroeta said Vodafone had been receiving “significant interest” from customers “who want to be connected to VHA at home and at work, as well as on their mobile.”

Vodafone would begin service trials over coming months, he said.