300,000 extra NBN premises to get FTTC speed boost

Alex Choros - Managing Editor + Group Telco Editor

Last updated 11 April 2017

An additional 300,000 premises across the country will connect to the National Broadband Network through Fibre-to-the-Curb technology, up from the 700,000 premises NBN previously planned to connect.

NBN chief network engineering officer Paul Ryan announced the move this morning, speaking at the Sydney CommsDay Summit.

"Having a technology as flexible as FTTC in our suite of network tools allows us to be agile with the build," said, Ryan, as reported by ITNews. "Premises in the expanded FTTC footprint will be delivered more efficiently from a cost and time perspective."

The additional 300,000 premises will span Victoria, NSW, Queensland, Western Australia, and South Australia.

Notably, these 300,000 premises were originally due to be connected to the National Broadband Network via Fibre-to-the-Node technology. Out of the initial 700,000 premises slated to get FTTC, 400,000 were part of Optus' Hybrid-Fibre Coaxial cable network, which was not fit for re-use.

Also known as Fibre-to-the-Kerb or Fibre-to the-Distribution-Point, FTTC is ostensibly a hybrid of Fibre-to-the-Premise and Fibre-to-the-node. Rather than laying fibre to a central node in a neighbourhood, fibre is built directly to property's kerb. The final connection from the kerb to your house is made with the existing copper wiring.

Not only does this facilitate faster download speeds, it would make it cheaper for to get a direct fibre connection to your house or business. Initial FTTC will allow typical NBN download speeds of up to 100Mbps. However, when combined with G.fast technology, speeds of up to 1Gbps are possible, making FTTC far more future proof.

NBN expects to launch commercial FTTC services in the first half of 2018. 100,000 are slated to be ready to connect at that point.

Alex Choros

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Alex Choros is the Managing Editor of WhistleOut Australia and an award-winning journalist. He's been writing about consumer technology for over a decade and is an expert on the Australian telco sector, to the point where he knows far too many phone and internet plans by heart. In addition to leading the WhistleOut editorial team, Alex is responsible for ruining the office Sonos with his troubled taste in music.

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