Australia’s national broadband network now reaches more than 1 million premises, the government announced on Wednesday.
NBN, the company responsible for the rollout of the network, had aimed to hit the 1 million mark by the end of June, but reached the target a month early, the Communications Ministry revealed.
The network passes 1.01 million premises, up from just over 275,000 in September 2013, when the country’s most recent election brought about a change of government and a subsequent rethink of the NBN plan. Essentially, the project is now focused on a fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) rollout encompassing a mix of broadband technologies, rather than the fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) deployment that was originally envisaged.
More than half of the premises covered are fixed-line brownfield deployments, but there are also greenfield fixed lines and fixed wireless technologies in the mix, as well as a handful of premises using the country’s interim satellite service.
Australia did not share new statistics on the number of homes and businesses that are actually using the NBN. However, last week NBN said it had activated around 389,000 premises as of the end of March and predicted it would reach 480,000 by the end of June. It said it is signing up customers at a rate of 12,300 per week.
