The Australian Government has announced a A$3 billion equity investment in the NBN to complete the upgrade of Australia-wide fiber-to-the-node (FTTN) connections to full fiber broadband ( FTTP).
Equity investing – a type of investment in which the government takes ownership of an entity with the expectation of a future return – is joined by an A$800 million investment from NBN Co. It is an extension of NBN Co’s fiber upgrade plan which aims to improve speeds for everyone across the entire network.
Although the company said initial construction of the NBN was completed in 2020, these fiber upgrades are key to improving the experience for internet users across the country served by a less reliable copper-based NBN .
NBN Co says these upgrades, which will upgrade the remaining approximately 622,000 homes and businesses still connected to the node-based NBN to enable fiber to the premises, will be completed by 2030 and that the work has already started. More than half of the homes and businesses that will be affected are located in regional Australia.
Full fiber, also known as fiber to the premises (FTTP), is the fastest type of NBN connection and is less susceptible to outages and outages than FTTN.
95 percent of properties currently served by fiber to the node will be able to voluntarily upgrade to fiber once work is completed at the home or business. As for the remaining five per cent, NBN Co must undertake additional design work on a case-by-case basis to confirm appropriate upgrades.
“This critical investment will provide access to better broadband for customers across the remaining part of our Fiber to the Node footprint,” NBN Co managing director Ellie Sweeney said.
Yes, now is the time to upgrade your NBN connection
If you have access to the NBN’s free fiber upgrade program, you should definitely consider upgrading. Broadband plans are more accessible than ever from dozens of providers across the country, and the best way to take advantage of them is with full-fiber broadband.
Full fiber is less prone to outages than fiber to the node, which relies on old copper lines to deliver your Internet service. It’s faster and more consistent during peak Internet traffic times (between 7 p.m. and 11 p.m.) and because it doesn’t rely on the same aging technology, it’s less likely to experience outages than older copper systems.
At the time of writing, NBN Co is offering upgrades to full fiber to eligible homes across Australia. To get the upgrade, you need to order an NBN 100 compatible plan, or ‘Home Fast’ plan, from your NBN provider and coordinate the upgrade with them. This plan, come September, will be upgraded to support 500 Mbps (and we’ll probably have to rename it colloquially “NBN 500”), giving you a much faster network experience at home.
To get the ball rolling, here are our current top picks for the NBN 100 and NBN 1000. The former is perfect for moving to full fiber for the first time, while the latter is best for achieving high speeds at an affordable price. attractive.
