NBN Co will receive up to $3 billion from the federal government and chip in $800 million itself to provide the last 622,000 premises stuck on fibre-to-the-node with an upgrade path.
Network upgrades are expected to be completed by the end of 2030.
For over 95 percent of the remaining FTTN footprint, the upgrade path is to be full fibre, but with the same rules as the existing overbuild – customers must order a minimum 100Mbps service in order to qualify for the upgrade.
Things are less clear for the other five percent of premises – about 31,000 – with NBN Co saying that “further design work” is needed “to confirm the appropriate upgrade path”.
It appears that NBN Co may look to future but as yet unspecified technology options to serve these premises, meaning they could remain on FTTN for some years still.
The latest federal government injection builds on the pre-election $2.4 billion pledged by the Labor government in 2022.
The year before, Labor said it would fund an extra 1.5 million homes and businesses in the FTTN footprint to be upgraded to fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP).
The previous government kickstarted the FTTN overbuild program in 2020, initially a $3.5 billion program funded entirely from private debt markets rather than equity.
While NBN Co is overbuilding the FTTN network with full fibre, users do not automatically qualify for an upgrade and must order a specific tier of service to do so.
However, FTTN is also a ‘burning platform’ in the sense that it is many times more expensive than fibre to operate, requires a disproportionate amount of maintenance, and is traditionally responsible for some of the worst user experiences associated with NBN services.
In August 2024, NBN Co said it had shifted “around 375,000” users to full fibre connections courtesy of its fibre-to-the-node and separate fibre-to-the-curb overbuild programs, converting up to 10,000 premises in a single week.
Two months later, NBN Co said it expected to upgrade half a million premises per year to upgrade to full fibre connectivity.