Regional Australians may eventually get a taste of gigabit broadband as NBN pushes Fixed Wireless to the limit.
NBN recently announced plans to offer 100/40 Mbps Fixed Wireless plans next year, doubling the current top speed tier to put regional Australia on par with metro fixed line speeds. The speed boost comes thanks to new carrier aggregation technology which bonds multiple wireless channels to create a single high-speed connection.
![NBN's Fixed Wireless towers can deliver 1Gbps broadband speeds beyond the major cities.](/web/20170430041237im_/http://www.canberratimes.com.au/content/dam/images/g/v/a/s/p/e/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gvsnaa.png/1493175504321.jpg)
It's an impressive jump considering that Fixed Wireless was only offering 12/1 Mbps plans when it launched in 2011, but there's still room for improvement. NBN opened up the throttle at a recent media demonstration in the Victorian regional city of Ballarat, clocking download speeds of 1077 Mbps and 165 Mbps up while sitting 1 km away from the nearest Fixed Wireless tower.
The upcoming 100 Mbps Fixed Wireless speeds are thanks to a new generation of Wireless Network Termination Devices (WNTDs) developed by Ericsson, NetComm and Qualcomm. Installed at the end user premises, these WNTDs can bond three 20 MHz channels to offer 250/50 Mbps or four channels to hit 400/55 Mbps.
The 1 Gbps demonstration involved using three of these WNTDs in unison, combing 11 channels from the 2.3 GHz and 3.4 GHz bands. Right now NBN doesn't have a single WNTD that can handle these speeds on its own, but they're in the works.
Unfortunately the improved speeds won't extend the range, which remains limited to within 14 km of a tower – which means it won't get more Australians off SkyMuster satellite and onto Fixed Wireless which is faster and more affordable. Fixed Wireless will serve 600,00 premises by the end of the rollout.
The 1Gbps Fixed Wireless speeds are also a theoretical maximum, with NBN representatives saying it would be "very difficult" to offer a service like this across the country's network of 2600 Fixed Wireless towers.
The 1 Gbps demonstration involved installing extra radio equipment at a nearby tower relying on fibre backhaul, taking advantage of untapped capacity. The major of Fixed Wireless towers across the country don't have the advantage of fibre backhaul, instead they rely on a microwave link to a nearby tower with fibre.
Of course 1Gbps isn't as impressive as the 10-Gbps speeds touted for fibre to the premises if NBN goes ahead with an NG-PON2 upgrade, but that's also at the trial phase and isn't yet on the rollout roadmap. The good news is that this fibre speed boost can also be used on the fibre backhaul supporting Fixed Wireless towers, not it's not just city slickers who will benefit.
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