NBN Welcomes $2.4B Govt Investment to Drive Fibre Rollout

NBN Co has welcomed the Government’s commitment to invest $2.4 billion to roll out more fibre to communities across Australia. The new investment will enable an additional 1.5 million homes and businesses currently served by Fibre to the Node (FTTN) to upgrade to Fibre to the Premises (FTTP).

Full fibre connections will help deliver faster broadband speeds, better reliability, are more energy efficient and support the provision of additional data capacity across the nbn® network. These upgrades will help ensure eligible customers can more effectively work from home and operate online businesses, participate in online education, engage in telehealth consultations, stream entertainment and connect with friends and family.

Eligible customers 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.

NBN Co will make further announcements on the suburbs and towns that will be included in the plans to extend fibre to 1.5 million additional premises in coming months.

Research commissioned by NBN Co and undertaken by Accenture has indicated that the economic impact of upgrading an additional 1.5 million premises to higher speed FTTP connections could generate a GDP uplift of up to $20 billion by 2030.

To trigger a full fibre upgrade, eligible customers will need to place an order with a participating retailer for a plan based on an eligible wholesale speed tier2. These include nbn’s three highest residential speed tiers: nbn® Home Fast, which offers wholesale download speeds of up to 100 Mbps; nbn® Home Superfast, which offers wholesale download speeds of up to 250 Mbps, or nbn® Home Ultrafast (FTTP)1,2, which offers wholesale download speeds of close to 1 Gbps3.

NBN Co’s original program to enable full fibre upgrades to up to 2 million premises served by FTTN is already well underway. Design and construction activity has been completed within many suburbs and towns across Australia and will enable around 550,000 premises currently served by FTTN to upgrade to FTTP by 31 December 2022.

The company is on track to enable around 10 million premises across Australia to access nbn® Home Ultrafast, offering wholesale download speeds of 500 Mbps to close to 1 Gbps, by the end of 2025.

Stephen Rue, Chief Executive Officer at NBN Co, said:
“We welcome the Government’s additional $2.4 billion investment in the nbn® network.

“The nbn® network is Australia’s digital backbone and the performance of the network underpins Australia’s global competitiveness and the economic future of our nation.

“The measure of this success hinges on NBN Co’s ability to grow the capability and capacity of the network to keep ahead of the nation’s digital demand.

“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. 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.

“Today’s announcement allows us to set a goal of enabling around 10 million premises, or up to 90 per cent of homes and businesses on the fixed line network, to access nbn’s highest residential speed tiers with wholesale download speeds of 500 Mbps to close to 1 Gbps by the end of 20253.”