nbn™ satellite access network

The business nbn™ Satellite Service leverages nbn’s leading-edge, high-throughput satellites and resilient ground infrastructure to bring new broadband capacity using the existing highly reliable network architecture.

The business nbn™ Satellite Service uses the nbn™ Sky Muster™ Satellites which are two Ka-band satellites, first launched in 2015 - currently in geostationary orbit 36,000km above the earth.

The satellites are the first high-throughput, Ka-band satellites launched to focus exclusively on the Australian landmass.

Key features are:

The satellites are designed with a spot beam architecture. This means larger capacity, higher wholesale bandwidth and extensive coverage across Australia.

nbn is extending the business nbn™ satellite service beam coverage from 93% to 100% of the Australian mainland, Tasmania and major outer islands including the Macquarie, Christmas, Lord Howe and Norfolk Islands. This will significantly increase beam coverage over the more densely populated areas of eastern Australia, and support service providers to deliver services to all of mainland Australia, Tasmania and many remote locations‡. All new beams are scheduled to be operable by July 29th 2021.

Note: Operational dates are based on information known to nbn at the time of publication and may be impacted by COVID-19 border closures or other unforeseen events. 

nbn has leveraged its significant investment to build resilience into the business nbn™ Satellite Service and its terrestrial network. Key wholesale features include: 

  • Points of Interconnection (POI) in both the east (Eastern Creek NSW) and west (Wangara WA) coast allowing service providers to build redundancy into their ABS service and for nbn to provide similar for VISP and IoT services.
  • The spot beam architecture is made possible by the 10 satellite ground stations (which includes one for redundancy). 
  • Our business nbn™ Satellite Operations Centre located in Melbourne manages network performance and customer service incidents, it also includes sandpit and testing capability for service providers. 

Due to it being a high frequency, Ka-band satellite service the equipment is relatively modest in size and therefore easier to install than other geostationary satellite systems available in Australia.

nbn offers a number of different NTD options to suit each product category of the satellite service. Each NTD includes an outdoor unit being the transceiver and antenna and an indoor unit being the modem.

‡An end customer’s serviceability may be affected by a range of factors including whether there is a clear line-of-sight to the satellite, no interference, for example from other end customer, retail service provider or third party equipment, and having a suitable location to install equipment.