As part of a national upgrade to Australia’s fixed line infrastructure, the National Broadband Network (NBN) will progressively replace most existing landline phone and internet services in the Perth suburb of Victoria Park, before moving to an additional 5,500 homes and businesses in areas of South Perth, Mandurah, Meadow Springs and Geraldton.
Laying the cable
In addition to its Western Australian rollout, NBN Co also announced a construction trial in four suburbs across Queensland and New South Wales.
The construction trial was designed to speed up the rollout of the NBN, with candidates in the trial including homes and businesses sitting within the Hybrid Fibre Coaxial (HFC) cable footprint – currently owned by the internet service providers Optus and Telstra.
Following deals signed last December, these cables may be progressively incorporated into the National Broadband Network, with more than three million homes and businesses in Australia’s population centres earmarked to receive the NBN over Telstra/Optus HFC cables.
According to NBN Co, the goal of the trials is, “to test construction processes to physically connect homes passed by the networks where a connection currently does not exist, as well as improving network capacity and broadband speeds”.