The NBN announced on Thursday its next rollout of the network, and surprise surprise, Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Treasurer Joe Hockey’s electorates were among them.
Abbott’s electorate of North Manly, and Hockey’s electorate of North Sydney are amongst the next lot of Australian suburbs to have construction of fiber to the node (fttn) or fiber to the premise (fttp) planned or underway by December 2016, as ZDNet pointed out.
Other areas that can sooner rather than later experience ~faster internet~ are Margaret River, Kalgoorlie, Buderim, Springfield in Brisbane, Port Macquarie, Ryde, Portsea, Mornington Peninsula, and Beaconsfield in Melbourne.
It will be interesting to see whether North Manly and North Sydney receive the faster, more expensive FTTP, or the cheaper and slower FTTN.
Although initial NBN plans under the Labor government were to connect 93% of Australian premises with FTTP (with the remaining seven percent reliant on satellite broadband), the Coalition federal government later announced that some areas would be receiving FTTN, to make use of existing copper and Hybrid Fibre-Coaxial (HFC) cable networks
This use of multi-technology means the NBN rollout will be cheaper and completed quicker, although it hasn’t been without criticism: the FTTN has lower capacities than FTTP, with about 25 to 50 megabits per second (MpbS) compared to 100Mpbs for the FTTP (and capacity for much, much more). It was called “one of the biggest mistakes humanity can ever make,” by Peter Cochrane, one of the UK’s foremost telecommunications experts.
The NBN’s initial budget forecast was for $44.1 billion, and later revised to $72.6 billion. However, Hockey’s 14/15 budget, delivered last year, announced the NBN would be receiving just $29.5 billion to cover up to 2017-18, when the NBN will go private, on top of the $8.6 billion already committed.
Over 3 million premises are slated to be connected by December 2016, of the 11.5 million premises forecasted to exist by that time.
The announcement yesterday included 200,000 premises that will be connected to the NBN network via the multi-technology mix.
“Today, around one in ten homes and business can connect to the NBN network,” said NBN’s chief operating officer Greg Adcock in a statement.
“The expansion of the the rollout reflects the company’s new multi-technology approach and is an important step toward reaching our goal of connection 8 million premises to the NBN network by 2020.”
Lifehacker reported in December last year that half the people who could connect to the NBN haven’t done so. (You can check to see if you’re home or business is eligible on the NBN website, and check your broadband quality on MyBroadband.)
The NBN is announcing quarterly new areas to receive technology to connect to the NBN network, so we can expect more suburbs added in three months time.
Still confused? Check out this video from 2013 on the then Labor government backed FTTP vs the Coalition’s multi-technology use of FTTN:
Photo: Pool via Getty Images
via Zdnet
