Nokia revealed today that NBN Co, Australia’s leading broadband provider, has achieved a groundbreaking milestone: It conducted the world’s first live network demonstration of multiple next-generation PON technologies. 

Nokia, known for its phones, has shifted focus to business networking in recent years. It provided the prototype technology for the test, which combined signals ranging from 10 Gbps to 100 Gbps, all running on a single NBN fibre connection. 

The test took place between an NBN exchange building and an unoccupied home with fibre and this is the first time Nokia's 100 gigabit prototype has been used outside of labs, showing its promise for future broadband services. 

Using Nokia’s fibre access platform, NBN achieved speeds of 10G, 25G, 50G, and 83G over its current fibre network. These superfast speeds are akin to having any Netflix show buffered and ready to go almost instantly. 

The demo aligns with NBN's plan to explore advanced technologies for national services and the results show how network providers can expand fibre networks to meet growing needs for faster connections.

The tech bit

This demonstration primarily serves to showcase the capabilities of the NBN fibre network as technology advances

Doctor Robert Joyce, NBN Co's head of customer strategy and innovation, recently stated that the fibre currently deployed, along with the free home upgrades, will be suitable for upgrades for the next "10, 15, 50 years." The only potential change would be the modem used.

The demo also showed that the NBN FTTP network can handle multiple PON technologies on the same fibre. This means new technologies can work with current ones without changing the network, ensuring a smoother transition to multi-gigabit technologies later on.

Also, NBN is installing Nokia's MF-14 optical line terminal (OLT) on the FTTP network. This supports higher-capacity fibre optic broadband technologies. NBN was the first in the southern hemisphere to deploy Nokia's MF series OLT.

These technologies can increase broadband speeds and capacity, leading to smoother video calls, better streaming, faster gaming, data downloads, and backups, and the ability to support more devices simultaneously. 

As amazing as this new technology is, NBN Co does not have plans to offer services with such high speeds in the near future, and these ultra-fast speeds are not currently accessible to commercial users.