Stephen Rue (NBN Co)
The federal government is to hand over $2.4 billion to NBN Co in order for it to replace more copper-based services with fibre.
The funding is earmarked to upgrade an extra 1.5 million homes and businesses in the fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) network to fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP).
Users living and working in eligible premises within the suburbs and towns that comprise the additional 1.5 million premises footprint will be able to order a higher speed service by the end of 2025.
Suburbs included in the fibre extension will be announced in the coming months.
NBN Co Stephen Rue said the organisation welcomed the government funding.
“Around one in five premises are connected to plans based on NBN wholesale speed tiers offering peak wholesale download speeds of 100 Mbps and above,” he said. “With more connected devices and more simultaneous data usage in homes and businesses, we expect to see growing demand for faster broadband services.
“Fibre is inherently more capable of delivering faster upload and download speeds, is generally more reliable than copper connections and reduces our maintenance and operating costs.”
The announcement comes the same week that NBN Co unveiled plans to link a further 300,000 units to FTTP connections across Australia.
