Australia’s NBN Co has announced a ‘significant milestone’ in its network rollout programme, revealing that more than two million additional premises are now able to order a full fibre connection via GPON technology. Such upgrades are being made available as part of an ongoing scheme that was previously confirmed as having been boosted by the government’s commitment to expand full fibre access to 1.5 million additional premises by the end of 2025; the state is committing AUD2.4 billion (USD1.6 billion) equity investment over four years as confirmed in the 2022-23 Federal Budget.
In total, 4.36 million homes and businesses are now said to either already have access to NBN Co’s fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) infrastructure delivered via GPON or are in an area where they can request an upgrade to the technology.
Meanwhile, alongside announcing the milestone for eligible premises NBN Co also claimed it is on track to extend access to its ‘Ultrafast’ service tier – which offers downlink speeds of between 500Mbps and 1Gbps via GPON – to ten million premises, or up to 90% of homes and businesses across Australia, by the end of 2025.