Recently, NBN Co has disclosed more of its plans to upgrade FTTN to FTTP. In line with this, the company identified a list of areas where approximately 90,000 premises will be eligible to order a Fibre Connect upgrade. The list of suburbs and towns includes 38 new locations in NSW, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, and Western Australia. Of these new locations, 15 are located in NSW, 11 in Victoria, six in Queensland, four in WA, and two in SA. 

Throughout the year, NBN Co is planning to allow around 60,000 FTTN premises to be made ready to order higher speed services per month. The company’s target is to make an additional 230,000 FTTN premises eligible to upgrade by the middle of the year and approximately 600,000 FTTN premises by yearend. So far, NBN Co has identified around 1.7 million of two million premises scheduled to become eligible for full-fibre upgrades, the first 50,000 of which were announced in March. 

According to NBN Co COO Katherine Dyer, the company is turning its full attention towards FTTN and FTTC upgrades. This is following the completion of the principal rollout. “We are on track to achieve our goal of enabling around 8 million premises - or up to 75% of homes and businesses on the βixed line network - to access NBN Co’s highest speed tiers with wholesale download speeds of 500Mbps to close to 1Gbps by the end of 2023,” she said.

Brad Whitcomb, Chief Customer Officer at NBN Co, said “We have so far identified the suburbs and towns across Australia where customers living and working in 1.6 million premises will be able to access the highest speeds currently available on the NBN network, with download speeds of close to 1 Gbps.”

“We are now inviting more than 50,000 FTTN premises to upgrade to full-fibre,” he further added.

He also said, “Each month throughout this year, we expect to make an additional 60,000 or so premises currently served by FTTN eligible for FTTP upgrades, giving around 600,000 households and businesses access to our highest speed services by the end of 2022.”

“With more devices connected in almost every home, and more people working from home, studying from home and streaming entertainment, the need for speed is becoming more important.”

“We are on track to achieve our goal of enabling around 8 million premises, or up to 75 percent of homes and businesses on the fixed-line network, to access NBN’s highest speed tiers with wholesale download speeds of 500 Mbps to close to 1 Gbps by the end of 2023.”

Meanwhile, communications minister Paul Fletcher said that “The Morrison Government is delivering on our $4.5 billion network upgrades that will mean up to 75% of premises in the fixed-line network can access ultra-fast broadband by 2023.”