If you live in Australia, you would no doubt be familiar with the nbn (or National Broadband Network).
You might be one of the many households or businesses that are currently connected to the nbn using the FTTN (or Fibre to the Node) technology. FTTN relies on the old Telstra copper cables to connect you to the nbn nodes. (The nodes are the big green boxes you would have seen around the neighbourhood). From the nbn nodes, the fibre cables then run all the way to the POI (or Points of Interconnect). To make it simple, POIs are essentially where your internet data gets distributed from.
So, to summarise the above, if you are utilising FTTN technology, the maximum speeds your internet connection can achieve will be heavily impacted by how far away you premises is from a node (so how much copper line your data needs to travel down), as well as the overall quality of you copper lines.
NbnCO recently said that at least 25% of Australian premised can’t achieve over 50mbps on the FTTN network. So basically, if you are paying for a 100mbps plan, you might not be able to physically achieve anywhere near that speed.
And that is where the latest nbnCO announcement comes into play. In September 2020, nbnco announced that they would be bringing faster internet speeds to 8 million people across the country.
They are doing this across numerous suburbs by upgrading FTTN connections to FTTP (or Fibre to the Premises/or Fibre to the Home)
Why is this so great? Well for starters, it removes that copper cabling hinderance and provides nbn fibre all the way to your house (or business). And on top of that, if you are with one of the selected internet providers, and upgrade you plan to take advantage of these new speeds that will be available to you, nbn will be carrying out the upgrade to your premises for free.
In addition to this, nbnCO announce in May 2022 that they will also be upgrade some FTTC (or Fibre to the Curb) connections to FTTP.
FTTC is better than FTTN, just, but still relies on copper wiring from your footpath to your premises. As of June 3, nbnCO have said that 160,000 premises across NSW, Vic and SA can request the FTTC to FTTP upgrade.
Recently we received notification from our internet provider that you could check if the free FTTP upgrade was available to your premises by visiting this page on their website. All you need to do is enter your address and the system will let you know what technologies are currently available for your premises.