NBN Co opens up FTTP upgrades to 90,000 new premises

Makes 46 new suburbs open for upgrades from FTTN connections.

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NBN Co has opened up 90,000 premises in 46 Australian suburbs to receive upgrades from Fibre to the Node (FTTN) to Fibre to the Premises (FTTP).

The upgrades, which will give premises the potential to access speeds of 500 Mbps and 1 Gbps by the end of next year, are now available to order, with NBN Co averaging at 60,000 premises per month as ready for upgrades.

In total, NBN Co expects 230,000 FTTN premises eligible to upgrade by 30 June 2022 and approximately 600,000 FTTN premises to be eligible by 31 December 2022.

The broadband builder opened the FTTN upgrade program on March 22 and named an initial set of retail service providers (RSPs) that users could place orders with.

To qualify for a full-fibre connection, users must order a higher-speed plan than they have of at least 100Mbps and keep it for at least a year.

“After rolling out the network at pace, we are turning our attention and investment towards improving access to fibre upgrades on Fibre-to-the-Node (FTTN) and Fibre-to-the-Curb (FTTC),” said Kathrine Dyer, NBN Co COO.

“We have so far identified the suburbs and towns across Australia where customers living and working in almost 1.7 million premises will be able to access the highest speeds currently available on the NBN network, with download speeds of close to 1 Gbps.

“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 speed tiers with wholesale download speeds of 500 Mbps to close to 1 Gbps by the end of 2023.”

The FTTN upgrades were first flagged in September 2020 as part of a $3.5 billion investment into the NBN, which also flagged improving speeds on its hybrid fibre coaxial (HFC) network up to 100 Mbps with the option of on-demand access to 1 Gbps.