The basic NBN rollout plan is for fibre to reach 93 per cent of Australian homes, for satellite to serve the most remote 3 per cent, and for regional areas making up the final four per cent to use fixed wireless. This 4G network won’t be completely rolled out until 2015, but we now know which townships will be online next year.
The first to receive the service will be homes, businesses and institutions in the less densely populated rural and regional communities that surround Geraldton (WA), Toowoomba (Qld), Tamworth (NSW), Ballarat (Vic) and Darwin (NT).
ISPs servicing these areas will offer plans up 12Mbps, and NBN Co says it expects speeds to improve as wireless technology advances. But what about bottlenecks? Apparently, “while wireless spectrum is shared between users, fixed wireless allows us to plan a network for a relatively predictable number of users in a given area.
Is your regional area on this list? Let us know if you’ve seen much coverage in your local area.
[NBN Co]