The NBN is pushing even further with its fibre upgrades across the network and has revealed the latest list of suburbs and towns where more than 200,000 homes and businesses will enjoy faster speeds thanks to this expansion.
These upgrades will allow customers living and working in areas currently served by fibre to the node (FTTN) to become eligible for fibre to the premises (FTTP) upgrades on demand if they decide to order a retail plan from their provider based on the NBN Home Fast (up to 100Mbps download speeds) NBN Home Superfast (up to 250Mbps) or NBN Home Ultrafast (up to 1Gbps) speed tiers.
NBN says it will enable internet retailers to offer the higher speed tiers from the first eligible customers in March 2022.
The NBN has already rolled out fibre into communities previously served by FTTN which now includes more than 1.4 million premises.
This latest announcement will take their total to more than 1.6 million premises served by fibre.
These upgrades will be coming to additional suburbs and towns in NSW, Victoria, QLD, SA and WA.
NBN’s $3.5bn fibre network upgrade programme has a goal of enabling more than two million premises to access NBN Home Ultrafast which offers download speeds of up to 1Gbps on demand.
NBN aims to make the NBN’s highest wholesale speed tiers available as demand grows to about 8 million premises or 75 per cent of homes and businesses on the fixed line network by 2023.
NBN will also start similar full fibre upgrades to be made available on demand to customers living and working in residents or businesses currently served by fibre to the curb (FTTC).
Fibre to the curb can already achieve line speeds to support the NBN Home Fast speed tier.
But from next year, the company expects to invite users living and working in eligible premises served by fibre to the curb to order higher speed NBN Home Superfast or NBN Home Ultrafast services to receive the full fibre upgrade.
NBN’s decision to upgrade certain areas from FTTN to FTTP is based on where they think the strongest demand for higher speed lies and provide maximum benefit to the most customers.
“We have always maintained a good balance in our approach to these upgrades, so that we deliver balanced benefits to metropolitan and regional Australia,” says NBN Chief Operating Officer Katherine Dyer.
“Our latest list of suburbs and towns demonstrates that we are making good on our promise of the delivery of faster speeds, and we are making great progress with design and construction on the programs well underway across the country.
“We are on track to achieve our goal of enabling around 8 million premises or up to 75 per cent of homes and businesses on the fixed line network to access NBN’s highest wholesale speed tiers, on demand, by the end of 2023.”
