It may not seem like it, but the rollout of the NBN is slowly continuing. Fibre is being built out to more homes across the country, and fixed wireless has similarly been added to the schedule for regional and areas, as well as suburban locations underserved by fibre.
25,000 new homes have been added to the fibre footprint nationwide, and 20,000 to the fixed wireless rollout map. In western Sydney, for example, Lalor Park and Kings Park have 2600 new houses connected directly to the fibre network, and 2400 houses on New South Wales’ Central Coast will have fibre rolled to their doorsteps.
As the rollout continues and as the Liberal government’s plan for the NBN further matures, it becomes less and less likely that new rollout zones will receive fibre to the premises, so those people in Lalor Park and Kings Park can count themselves lucky. Fibre to the node hasn’t yet been signed off for widespread rollout, but it’s on the government’s roadmap, so future construction sites are increasingly likely to be planned with it in mind.
These 45,000 premises across five states are in addition to the 167,000 which have been recently added to the rollout map’s “pre-build” phase, which denotes preparation for the installation of NBN equipment for either fibre or fixed wireless. The fixed wireless areas join the first zone switched on in regional South Australia earlier this month, with cellular network towers and in-house antennas being used to provide download and upload speeds of around 25Mbps and 5Mbps respectively. [NBN Co]