NSW, QLD suburbs in trial to speed up NBN rollout

Four suburbs across Queensland and NSW have been chosen to take part in a trial designed to speed up the rollout of the NBN. The suburbs are Emu Plains in NSW; and Redcliffe, Slacks Creek, and Merrimac in QLD.

Homes and business potentially included in the trial are among the more than 3 million premises that sit inside the hybrid fibre coaxial (HFC) cable footprint currently owned by Optus and Telstra, NBN Co said on Thursday.

“Following deals signed last December, these cables may be progressively incorporated into the National Broadband Network, and are planned to be used to deliver fast broadband services to homes and businesses within that footprint,” NBN said in a statement.

The trials will test construction processes to physically connect homes passed by the networks where a connection currently doesn’t exist, as well as improving network capacity and broadband speeds consumers may receive, NBN said.

NBN Co’s CTO, Dennis Steiger, said the construction trials are an important step in the organisation’s goal towards ensuring all Australians can receive fast broadband as soon as possible.

“We are already planning upgrades to the HFC network to enable families and businesses to receive higher speeds. The aim of this construction is to deliver valuable insights into how to deploy that upgraded HFC network at scale,” he said.

The trials will begin in mid-2015 ahead of large scale integration of HFC technology into the network, which is scheduled to commence in 2016, NBN Co said.

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