Australia’s National Broadband Network (NBN) and the Australian Government have released the latest suburbs and towns where additional premises will become eligible to get fibre connected to their house or business by ordering an eligible wholesale speed tier, with up to 58% located in regional areas and the rest in metro areas.
The NBN is one of Australia's most significant infrastructure projects, and its initial establishment is a major source of government expenditure. It is an investment in infrastructure to provide high-capacity data communications across the nation, serving individuals and organisations alike. In addition, it is aimed to address the country's broadband availability and performance and to facilitate the structural separation of Telstra by providing an optic fibre alternative to its copper access network.
The new upgrades, as announced, are part of the NBN fibre upgrade programme, which was boosted by the Australian Government’s recent announcement of an additional AU$2.4 billion investment.
Full fibre connection to the NBN network offers customers access to the higher speed tiers, which delivers a better, more reliable internet experience for homes and businesses.
The enhancements to the NBN network to deliver faster speeds and more data reflect and support business and societal changes over the last two years.
According to Venture research commissioned by NBN, online health consultations have increased by 147%, online secondary educational engagement has grown by 114%, and a third of people who can work from home now expect to continue working from home at least one day a week.
The company also supports growing demands from Australian businesses for faster speeds and more data. Research indicates that 40% of businesses use video conferencing, cloud storage or cloud-based software.
Other benefits of higher speeds include faster uploads and downloads for homes and businesses; faster game upgrades; faster streaming that will make it easier to work from home, and a more enjoyable movie experience.
The benefits are even more significant for larger households with many high-bandwidth devices being used at the same time. More speed is better for the whole family, streaming online simultaneously, working from home, gaming, and watching movies.
NBN is on track to enable up to 10 million premises, or up to 90% of homes and businesses across Australia, to access NBN Home Ultrafast, offering wholesale download speeds of 500MB per second to close to 1GB per second by the end of 2025.
To trigger an upgrade, customers at eligible premises must place an order with a retailer based on one of NBN's three highest residential wholesale speed tiers.
“Today’s announcement is good news for customers living and working in more than one million homes and businesses across Australia because they will soon be able to access the fastest residential speeds available on the NBN network,” says Kathrine Dyer, Chief Operating Officer at NBN.
“We are unlocking social and economic benefits across Australia by pushing fibre deeper into communities. Fibre is inherently more capable of delivering faster upload and download speeds, is generally more reliable than copper connections and reduces our ongoing maintenance and operating costs.”
“So far, we have identified the suburbs and towns across Australia where customers living and working in around 3 million premises currently served by NBN Fibre to the Node will be able to access full fibre upgrades by the end of 2025.”
“In just six years data use has tripled on the NBN network, and that exponential growth is expected to continue as customer demands increase to meet new technology.”