Australia’s NBN Co on Thursday confirmed it will upgrade its hybrid fibre coaxial (HFC) network to DOCSIS 3.1 – which can deliver 10 Gbps downlink and 1 Gbps uplink speeds – by 2017.
The state-owned broadband wholesaler is in the process of taking control of HFC infrastructure currently operated by Optus and incumbent Telstra. The networks cover 3 million premises and five major metropolitan areas: Adelaide, Brisbane, the Gold Coast, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney. They currently run DOCSIS 3.0, which supports maximum downlink and uplink speeds of around 1 Gbps and 216 Mbps respectively.
"It is our intention to provide fibre-like speeds on our HFC network," said Dennis Steiger, chief technology officer at NBN Co, who explained to Total Telecom that upgrading the existing cable network "gives us the ability to get to higher speeds more quickly and economically" than replacing it with fibre.
That said, "it will take a while to deploy" DOCSIS 3.1, he stressed.
Steiger said NBN Co must first integrate Telstra’s and Optus’ HFC networks into the national broadband network. It aims to offer 100 Mbps services in mid-2016 and steadily increase the peak speed where and when the network is upgraded to DOCSIS 3.1.
With that in mind, NBN Co said in a separate announcement that it will conduct HFC trials in select locations in New South Wales and Queensland.
The move is in line with NBN Co’s multi-technology rollout strategy that uses a combination of fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP), fibre-to-the-node (FTTN), fixed-wireless, satellite, and cable infrastructure.
Under Aust ralia’s previous administration, NBN Co was tasked with deploying a network predominantly based on FTTP. However, a change in government brought about a change of approach in favour of a mix of broadband technologies led by FTTN.
Steiger said it was "a pretty significant change", but insisted that "we’re reaching a sense of stability at NBN Co" and consequently there is "a very positive atmosphere" at the company.
In its fiscal half-year results published in late February, NBN Co revealed that its network had passed 750,000 premises and had 320,000 active customers as of 31 December 2014. It aims to pass 1 million premises and have 480,000 active customers by the end of its fiscal year.
"We’re right on track to meet that [target]," Steiger said. "We’re really getting down to business and starting to execute."
