Another 300,000 Australian premises are getting fibre all the way to the driveway as NBN becomes more generous with its fibre rollout.
It seems the Multi-Technology Mix has been in constant flux since the Coalition government decided to scrap plans to run fibre to the premises to 93 per cent of Australian homes and businesses. These days it's pot luck as to whether fibre runs to your door, your basement, the end of your driveway or the node around the corner.
Alternatively you could end up using the HFC pay TV cable networks to access the NBN. Or if you're really off the beaten track you might rely on Fixed Wireless towers or SkyMuster satellite.
Fibre to the curb, also known as fibre to the distribution point, is a relatively recent addition to the NBN mix and was only brought into play last year. It basically runs fibre all the way to the telephone pit out in your street, only relying on the copper phone line to run over (or under) the footpath and your front lawn to reach the house.
Over such a short copper run, FttC is capable of handling the current top-tier 100/40 Mbps NBN speeds. In terms of future-proofing, last year an XG.FAST trial saw NBN achieve speeds of 8Gbps over a 30-metre twisted-pair copper line – ensuring that FttC has some life in it yet.
To be fair FttC isn't as good as fibre all the way into your home, especially with talk of the 10Gbps NG-PON2 trials, but it's not a bad compromise short of convincing NBN to revert to a full FttP rollout – which will never happen under this government. Even if there were a change of government tomorrow, it's unlikely they'd completely abandon the other FttX technologies and HFC at this point in the game.
When fibre to the curb was introduced last year, NBN head honcho Bill Morrow insisted it would be used sparingly – only where it made the most economic sense – and that it didn't stack up as a wide-scale replacement for other technologies.
It seems times have changed. Initially fibre to the curb was only expected to support 300,000 premises, but this grew to 700,000 when NBN decided to scrap the Optus HFC network. Not every home in the Optus HFC footprint is now getting FttC, only the areas which don't overlap with Telstra's HFC cable network which is gradually becoming NBN cable but is experiencing significant teething problems.
Now FttC is destined to reach another 300,000 premises – spread across Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth – which were previously destined to receive FttN. That brings us to 1 million FttC connections in total and the justification for this change of heart is largely related to cost and time to deploy. One benefit of FttC is that it draws power from the premises, unlike FttN where the neighbourhood node requires its own power supply.
Once again there'll be calls to abandon FttN completely and offer all these premises FttC, but that's unlikely to happen considering that 40 per cent of the country is still earmarked for FttN. Connecting a home to FttC is typically $500 more expensive, but as it becomes more feasible there will likely be premises in the early FttN rollout which would have received FttC had they been further down the queue.
When will the NBN arrive at your home? Do you care how close the fibre runs to your front door?
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