NBN Co’s new push for 1 million premises to make fibre switch

NBN Co is set to allow over 1 million premises with problem copper lines to upgrade to fibre without buying a more expensive plan, marking a significant evolution of its proactive conversion program.

Only 18 months ago, the company had targeted 53,000 fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) premises that had under-performing, poorly performing or otherwise damaged copper connections for free fibre upgrades.

This rose to 700,000 “locations” as of June 30 this year and is expected to surpass 1 million eligible premises by the end of this year.

The NBN has long had issues with a portion of users on copper-based lines being unable to achieve basic minimum speeds.

Frequent faults and performance problems on these lines make them costly to support.

Proactively transitioning the connections to fibre is seen as a way to improve the user experience and reduce NBN Co’s costs.

Number soup

The new figures come from the latest instalment of the annual service improvement plan or ASIP [pdf], a regulatory document NBN Co has only had to produce three times so far.

Most premises in NBN Co’s FTTN and fibre-to-the-curb (FTTC) footprints that are being overbuilt with fibre must order a 100Mbps-plus service, and stay with it for a year, to qualify for the upgrade.

The exception to this is premises that NBN Co would prefer to migrate off copper as soon as practicable, mostly to improve service performance and reduce costs.

The range of circumstances that can trigger an unconditional fibre upgrade have grown over time, most recently earlier this year.

What is now clear is just how many premises NBN Co is willing to offer a free upgrade to.

iTnews asked an NBN Co spokesperson for assistance to decipher and reconcile the various figures in the ASIP concerning premises with troubled copper connections that qualify for the free fibre upgrade.

What it boils down to is:

• By H1 FY26, over 1 million premises will qualify for an FTTP upgrade without needing to order a high-speed tier service.
• As of June 30 2025, approximately 700,000 premises were eligible for a fibre upgrade “without necessarily being required to order a high-speed tier of 100Mbps and above”, the spokesperson said.
• Of those 700,000, around 500,000 have underperforming lines or are in what NBN Co calls its “fibre assurance footprint”. 
• To be in the “assurance footprint”, a connection has to have problems with “speed, reliability, stability, and [other] network-related factors”. It could also be storm-damaged.
• Out of the 500,000, about 110,000 had successfully upgraded as of June 30, “without necessarily ordering a high-speed tier” service.
• The remaining 200,000 premises in the 700,000 “have never connected to the NBN, so fibre has been prioritised as the connection method, rather than NBN Co rolling out new copper,” the spokesperson said.

The next 300K

That leaves 300,000 additional premises that now also qualify for an unconditional – or less conditional – fibre upgrade.

Exactly what type of premises these are isn’t entirely clear, but they could be from the FTTC footprint.

NBN Co has only recently been able to trial “assurance fibre upgrades for 30,000 FTTC customers”.

“Upon completion of the trial, NBN Co plans to expand this process to cover underperforming FTTC lines more broadly in early FY26,” the company said.

“This initiative aims to address the needs of FTTC customers who are facing reduced speeds, instability, or repeat assurance issues due to the limitations of copper lines.”

It said that “technical limitations” had previously thwarted its ability to offer these users fibre upgrades.

Expanding the upgrades “will ensure that the same process is applied to all underperforming FTTN/C lines that cannot achieve at least 50Mbps,” the company said.

FTTB upgrade path tested under ‘limited trials’

One cohort of NBN users still largely not covered in upgrade plans is the fibre-to-the-basement (FTTB) footprint, dominated by multi-dwelling unit (MDU) developments.

The ASIP notes that “a full fibre upgrade for the FTTB footprint is not currently planned”.

However, some potentially promising news for users is that “limited trials for FTTB to FTTP upgrades are in progress.”

“These trials aim to provide key insights into customer responsiveness and market opportunities,” NBN Co wrote.

“The findings from these trials will help inform future strategy.”

MDU upgrades

NBN Co does have an upgrade path for MDUs in the FTTN and FTTC footprint, which it is calling the full fibre upgrade strata or FFUS program.

This has a different set of eligibility criteria.

“[We] currently offer full fibre upgrades to eligible MDU customers within the FTTN and FTTC footprint with a customer co-contribution of $275 per premise,” the company wrote.

“Moving into FY26 and FY27, NBN Co plans to scale fibre connectivity in the FTTN/FTTC footprint to meet the growing demand for high-speed internet services.”

For everyone else, your incentive is still fibre

For most FTTN and FTTC users, the requirement to commit to a 100/20Mbps plan to trigger a full fibre upgrade will stay.

It’s revealed in the ASIP that retail service providers (RSPs) had been lobbying NBN Co to run a ‘try before you buy’ style campaign to encourage more users to transition.

This isn’t a new idea: for years, NBN Co ran similar programs to shift customers off more basic tiers, or to encourage them to trial the faster speeds.

As notes by RSPs, “There is … a portion of [the customer] base that are happy with their existing NBN speed tier and show no interest in increasing their existing speed.”

“In order to encourage these customers to move off copper-based services, NBN Co needs to consider incentives such as a no cost speed upgrade (for example 100/20 speeds for 12 months of the 50/20 Mbps price – a try before you buy option with the option for the customer to downgrade back to 50/20 at the end of a 12-month trial without a downgrade penalty).”

NBN Co didn’t rule it out entirely, but “deferred [it] for future consideration”.

“Given current upgrade volumes, NBN Co does not believe the ‘try before you buy’ proposal is appropriate to pursue at this point in time, but appreciate the proposal and may consider it at a future time,” it responded.