Country set to take on city with access to world-leading broadband

nbn rolls out upgrade to fixed wireless service

More than half a million Aussie homes and businesses in regional and rural Australia will have access to world-leading broadband following an upgrade to nbn’s™ fixed wireless service.

Using radio signals from nbn ground stations, the technology delivers fast broadband by transmitting data to equipment inside and outside the home. It is designed to provide access to wholesale speeds of up to 50mbps download and 20mbps upload, which is currently 30 per cent faster than our next best fixed wireless global peer in Ireland.   

Unlike mobile wireless services where speeds can be affected by the number of people moving into an area, nbn’s™ fixed wireless service is designed to deliver fast and reliable broadband to regions which often experience lags and drop-outs.

It is currently available in hundreds of communities across the country including Bendigo and Wangaratta in Victoria; Mackay, Bundaberg, Gympie and Toowoomba in Queensland; Katanning and Pinjarra in Western Australia; Riverland and Adelaide Hills in South Australia; Coffs Harbour, Nowra and Wagga Wagga in New South Wales; North West Coast and Tasman Peninsula in Tasmania; Howard Springs and Berry Springs in Northern Territory.

Gavin Williams, Executive General Manager, Fixed Wireless and Satellite Products said:

“By the time we complete the nbn™ network rollout in 2020, this world-leading broadband service will provide more than half a million homes and businesses living in regional and rural Australia with access to faster internet speeds that rival what their city cousins have available today.”

“Following the launch of Sky Muster, nbn’s first satellite, this milestone is yet another critical part of our plan to help bridge the nation’s digital divide. We’re closer than ever before to being on a level playing field between the city and the bush by providing kids in rural areas with access to digital textbooks, farmers with the latest technology and creating a world of new possibilities for regional small businesses.”

Today’s news follows a recent Akamai report which ranked Australian Internet speeds at 46^th globally, demonstrating the need to provide better access to fast broadband for all Australians.

Showing the time it could take to perform online tasks using the new nbn™ fixed wireless service highlights its potential benefits:

Visit our nbn blog series to learn more about the new technology and how broadband is changing life in the bush.
 

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Notes to editors

• nbn is building a new, fast wholesale broadband network which can be accessed by all communities across Australia. Our goal is to connect eight million homes and businesses by 2020.
• The nbn™ fixed wireless network uses advanced technology commonly referred to as LTE or 4G, and is engineered to deliver services to a fixed number of premises within each coverage area.
• The upgrade to nbn’s fixed wireless technology is designed to provide access to wholesale speeds ranging from up to 25-50mbps download and up to 5-20mbps upload. This range indicates the maximum data throughout that nbn is aiming to deliver to retail service providers at least once per 24 hour period.
• The nbn™ fixed wireless service is already available to 300,000 homes and businesses in regional and rural Australia, with around 600,000 premises able to be connected by 2020 when the roll out is complete.
• The "Fixed Wireless Broadband: A Global Comparison" report was commissioned by Ericsson and conducted by Ovum Research and published in July 2015.
• Australia ranks 46th globally when it comes to average Internet connection speeds according to the Akamai Second Quarter, 2015 State of the Internet Report.
• We’re designing the nbn™ network to provide these speeds to our wholesale customers, telephone and internet service providers.  End-user experience, including the speeds actually achieved over the nbn™ network, depends on the technology over which services are delivered to your premises and some factors outside our control like equipment quality, software, broadband plans and how the end-user’s service provider designs its network. Access to your work network will depend on factors outside our control like your organisation’s IT policy and infrastructure.

Speed test example:

1.    Based on a ten minute You Tube video – running at 720p – would constitute a file size of around 75MB – http://www.amaysim.com.au/mobile-plans/amaysim-mobile-broadband/mobile-data-plans-what-size-data-plan-do-i-need/what-you-can-do-with-1gb-mobile-data-plan.html

2.    A 2 hour podcast with 128Kbps bitrate contains 120MB of data- http://create.blubrry.com/manual/creating-podcast-media/audio/mp3-mpeg-layer-3-tips/

3.    A two hour HD Netflix movie contains 6GB of data - https://help.netflix.com/en/node/87

• Example has been calculated based on speeds operating at 50mbps download and 20mbps upload

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