Up to 75% of Australians will be able to get gigabit NBN by 2023 thanks to new upgrades

By Alex Choros

Last updated 23 September 2020

The federal government today announced a raft of NBN upgrade measures that will see more Australians able to access faster internet connections. Thanks to the $3.5 billion upgrade, up to 75% of Australian homes and businesses will be able to get gigabit NBN plans by 2023, up from 18% right now.

A key part of the upgrade program is taking fibre deeper into neighbourhoods currently serviced by the Fibre to the Node (FTTN) technology type, allowing as many as two million households to upgrade to Fibre to the Premise (FTTP). This is notable as FTTN is widely considered the worst NBN technology type due to speed degradation issues caused by the use of copper. A premise needs to be within 400 metres of the local exchange to have a chance of achieving NBN 100 speeds.

On the other hand, FTTP doesn't suffer from these kinds of issues. All FTTP households are able to achieve speeds of up to a gigabit.

Rather than upgrading all two million households to FTTP, customers in upgraded FTTN areas will need to request a fibre connection themselves. The upgrade will be delivered free of charge, but the government says the opt-in approach will mean it doesn't spend money deploying ultra-fast internet to households who don't need it.

Customers currently on non-FTTP types can already request an upgrade through NBN Co's Technology Change Program, but the cost of this is typically thousands of dollars.

The HFC and Fibre to the Curb (FTTC) portions of the network will also be upgraded to allow all customers to attain gigabit speeds. Right now, only 7% of HFC connections can get an NBN 1000 plan, and only 70% can get NBN 250. No FTTC customers can currently get NBN 250 or NBN 1000 plans.

Fibre to the Building (FTTB) is the only fixed-line connection type to not benefit from today's news.

Today's announcement is notable, given the Coalition government abandoned Labor's plan for a predominantly FTTP NBN, instead introducing technologies such as FTTN, HFC, and FTTC as part of its multi-technology mix.

Communications Minister Paul Fletcher says that upgrading the NBN as necessary was always what the Coalition government envisaged.

"From the outset the plan set out in our 2013 Strategic Review was to get the network rolled out as quickly as possible – and then deliver upgrades when there was demand for them. We’ve steadily delivered on our plan for seven years; the further investment announced today is exactly what our plan envisaged," said Fletcher in a statement.

"This is the right time for this network upgrade. There is a long term trend of broadband demand growth – with a very significant spike this year as COVID-19 has changed the way we use the internet."

Conversely, Shadow Communication Minister Michelle Rowland says that while Labor welcomes decision, it duplicates "both the cost and time to connect [Australians with] fibre after the Liberals left them behind with copper".

"Labor welcomes this step and surely people are wondering — what on earth was the point of spending $51 billion of taxpayers’ dollars on the Liberals’ second-rate copper network to begin with?," said Rowland in a statement.

"Their decision to attack and dump fibre was never about cost, but always about the politics."

"Australian taxpayers have paid more for a network that does less, and more money is now required to play catch up," said Rowland.

Work on these upgrades will begin in the coming months.

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