Trial residence in Coburg connected to Fibre-to-the-Curb broadband

NBN Co - the company building Australia’s national wholesale broadband access network - has activated its first Fibre-to-the-Curb (FTTC) premises as part of its ongoing trials of the ground-breaking network technology in Coburg, a northern suburb of Melbourne.

In connecting a trial premises to FTTC the company has achieved speeds of 109Mbps downstream and 44Mbps upstream using VDSL technology over a 70 metre copper line that serves the premises.

FTTC works by delivering new fibre all the way to the property boundary where it connects to a Distribution Point Unit (DPU) in a telecom pit that then connects to the existing copper lines serving the premises.

FTTC delivers substantial time and cost savings when compared to competing technologies including Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) where driveways often require trenching, or Fibre-to-the-Node (FTTN) which requires mains power  to the node.

NBN Co is leading the world in the deployment of FTTC technology and is planning to launch commercial services in the first half of 2018.

NBN Co expects to serve an initial 1 million premises with FTTC and estimates the technology will cost around $2,900 per premises to deliver compared to $4,400 for FTTP.

Bill Morrow, CEO of nbn said:

“We believe FTTC will become another vital tool in the mix of technologies we’re using to deliver the nbn™ access network.

“Our huge country makes deploying the nbn™ network extraordinarily complex so having flexibility in terms of the technology we deploy in the field is incredibly important.

“Being able to choose the right technology for each area helps us deliver the project on time and on budget.

“Reducing the cost of the network by bringing on-board new technologies like FTTC is crucial because the more money that we spend on the network, the more Australians will have to pay for their broadband.”