1 December 2016
The Turnbull Government’s multi-technology National Broadband Network rollout has hit another milestone, with more than one million fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) connections ready-for-service.
Barely a year after the first switch-on, the number of FTTN connections available has now overtaken the brownfields fibre-to-the-premises coverage footprint.
In 2013, the Coalition promised to speed up the rollout, and deliver the nbn to households sooner and more affordably.
That promise has been upheld.
nbn launched node-based services on 26 September 2015, and today’s weekly rollout update shows there are more addresses able to access the nbn via FTTN and fibre-to-the-basement (FTTB) connections than FTTP.
It has taken more than five years to make one million premises serviceable over nbn’s all-fibre architecture and costs the company $4,400 per premises. That cost compares to less than $2,200 per premises to connect with FTTN/B.
nbn’s FTTN/B network stands at 1,135,000 premises ready to connect (19 per cent of the technology’s proposed service area). In comparison, the FTTP network reaches 1,117,000 premises, despite being under construction since 2010.
Rolling out FTTN not only saves time, it avoids damage and disruption outside and inside homes and businesses.
The combined number of active FTTN/B premises is 382,647. This compares to just 51,000 premises connected to the nbn at the time the Coalition came into Government.
FTTN’s wholesale average speed for connected services stands at 70 Mbps, around double the global average peak connection speed of 36 Mbps as measured by Akamai[1]