A digital divide in upgrade to NBN

MORE than 1 million Australian households will miss out on high-speed broadband upgrades under the NBN’s $4.5bn upgrade package.

Those who do qualify for the speed boost will also have to wait until June for construction to begin.

Details of NBN Co’s billiondollar boost began to emerge as the company launched its 2021 corporate plan and after Communications Minister Paul Fletcher unveiled a policy backflip to upgrade parts of the national network and connect more households and businesses to gigabit-per-second speeds.

Telecommunications analysts welcomed the NBN Co’s adoption of more fibre in the network but warned important specifics had yet to be revealed, including the areas of Australia that would receive upgrades first, and whether the highest download speeds would price some users out of the market.

Mr Fletcher said the upgrade was “the next logical step” in its development, and would boost download speeds for millions of users from a minimum of 25 megabits per second to as high as 1000 mbps within three years.

“It means that by 2023, 75 per cent of all fixed-line premises in Australia will be able to order ultra fast broadband speeds up to one gigabit per second,” Mr Fletcher said.

Most of the upgrade package would fund a speed boost for customers using fibre-tothe-node technology, replacing copper lines with fibre optic cables in a reversal of the plan introduced by then communications minister Malcolm Turnbull in 2013.

NBN Co chief executive Stephen Rue said growing demand during the coronavirus pandemic “accelerated” plans to upgrade the NBN.

“Our focus has been on completing the build of the network,” he said. “It (has become) apparent to us that now is the time to we need to start investing to ensure that by 2023 we have as many people as we can able to order those high-speed tiers.”

But not every NBN user will receive access to the network’s top download speeds under the upgrade package.

The plan will see $2.9bn spent installing fibre connections in suburban streets, passing 2 million homes currently served by FTTN connections.

But approximately 3.1 million households and businesses currently use the technology, meaning more than 1 million will miss out on the upgrade.

“We will continue to assess demand and to assess the extent to which people choose higher speeds,” Mr Rue said.