6,000 users among 43 apartment buildings across Sydney, Canberra, and Melbourne will be the first to join the NBN’s fibre-to-the-basement rollout coming mid this year – Alan Jones, radio personality residing in Sydney’s Bennelong Apartments, AKA the Toaster, will be one of them.
Mr. Jones had been against the previous government’s FTTP (fibre-to-the-premise) network model that has since been replaced with the multi-technology mix version of the Coalition.
Today’s Liberal Communications Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, is noted to have been in disagreement with the radio personality in the past, not because of the new NBN model, but over the communication minister’s alleged political ambitions.
The Toaster at 1 Macquarie St., Sydney, is one of the 43 apartment blocks the company has selected in its efforts to speed up the NBN rollout. Also included are 204 Lygon St. in Melbourne and 2 Marcus Clarke St. in Canberra.
These initial 6,000  users (2,000 of whom are expected to get connected by the end of March) who are going to be connected to the network by mid this year are just the first of NBN Co’s target 1.9 million homes by June next year.
Fibre-to-the-basement is part of the Coalition Government’s Multi technology mix broadband network and it is expected to be rolled out faster and cheaper compared with the previous Labor Government’s original network plan. This is because the FTTB technology does not require the installation of fibre in each apartment in every building.
FTTB trial users have reported download speeds of 89Mbps and upload speeds of 36Mbps.
However, not all buildings included in the initial rollout list have full approval from their respective body corporates, but NBN Co said they are making good progress and are confident they will gain approval. The company will shoulder electricity expenses for the technology they will install.
In the coming months, as more areas are scheduled for NBN comes in, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) can start selling FTTB NBN services to the buildings included in the rollout.
Premises that will be connected to the NBN via HFC (hybrid fibre-coaxial) networks will not be included in the FTTB rollouts. HFC, used for cable TV, was acquired by NBN Co from Telstra and Optus under the renegotiated NBN contracts. Customer pilot on the HFC is set for the last quarter of this year, with commercial services expected to become available in the beginning of 2016.