First NBN FTTN services switched on in South Australia

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news Minister for Communications Mitch Fifield has jointly announced that the first NBN fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) services have been switched-on in South Australia.

Making the announcement with the Minister was retiring Member for Boothby, Dr Andrew Southcott.

Liberal Candidate for Boothby, Nicolle Flint, said that residents in the Adelaide suburb of St Marys are among the first to benefit from the “faster NBN which will revolutionise the way we work, learn and access services”.

“Around 2,800 home owners and businesses in Boothby can now place an order with their preferred service provider and experience the benefits of the NBN’s high-speed broadband for themselves,” Flint said.

Almost 20,000 additional local premises are scheduled to be switched on in coming months, using a combination of technologies, she added.

The NBN network is also coming to a further 28,200 premises in the nearby suburb of Boothby, with a total of around 52,000 homes and businesses expected to be reached before 2018.

A statement from Fifield stated: “In 2013 under Labor, the NBN was a mess. There were only 813 existing premises connected to the NBN’s fibre network across the whole of South Australia. There are now more than 126,000 premises able to connect an NBN service, with more than 56,000 active users.”

The NBN is “on track” to meet this year’s rollout forecasts and the network is expected to be completed by 2020, Fifield concluded.

Fibre to the node (FTTN) is a telecoms network architecture based on fibre-optic cables run to a cabinet (‘node’) serving an area, from which existing copper cabling takes services into the premises.

While Labor had originally advocated for a fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) rollout, the Coalition Government has focused instead on integrating the legacy copper and HFC cable networks owned by Telstra and Optus.

This ‘multi-technology mix’ is deemed to be more cost efficient, but has been criticised by the likes of independent telecommunications consultant Paul Budde for not being as ‘future proof’ as a full-fibre network.

In a recent blog post Budde called for “anybody in favour of a better NBN” to help promote the use of a full-fibre network through their connections in communities, industry, politics or media.

Image credit: Office of Mitch Fifield

17 COMMENTS

  1. If I didn’t know otherwise I put this down to electioneering ……. Wait a minute!
    And why does Mitch always look like he’s just squeezed out a node?

  2. Hey I live there!

    Telstra have been spamming NBN stuff for a while and nbnco sent out stuff saying “soon” but I haven’t had anything about it being accessible yet.

  3. FTTN is not something to be proud of Fifield.

    As usual you are being disingenuous with your statements too. Labour had to build the NBN company up from scratch – including building a OSS/BSS and a whole backbone/transit network before connecting customers. The ramp up was always going to occur around this time, for which you are now taking credit for.

  4. GimpCo spreading around that mediocrity as slow as possible. 248 days to go coalition clowns would be wise not to draw attention to their failures but considering the ineptitude displayed so far I guess they cant help themselves. $56+ billion for this unmitigated disaster.

  5. Correct me if I’m wrong, but 2,800 premises now able to order FttN means the other 123,400 premises in SA able to connect to nbn™ have Labor to thank for it?

    Oh, and condolences to the good people of St Marys, who in future will be stuck in an internet backwater once bandwidth demands exceed the capability of FttN.

    • “Oh, and condolences to the good people of St Marys, who in future will be stuck in an internet backwater once bandwidth demands exceed the capability of FttN.”

      Don’t forget, if Turnbull didn’t change the technology and actually allowed the companies contracted to actually finish what they were contracted to roll out, ie Fttp , we’d all actually be connected to Fttp a lot sooner, and not only now be given the chance to connect to the outdated fttn this government changed to.

      I am actually sad to see long standing MP, Mr Southcott leave. As for Mrs Flint, good luck, something tells me you’ll need it.

    • Could be far worse, they could have had HFC cable in the area then they’d be really rooted for the next 10 years(min)!

  6. A statement from Fifield stated: “In 2013 under Labor, the NBN was a mess. There were only 813 existing premises connected to the NBN’s fibre network across the whole of South Australia. There are now more than 126,000 premises able to connect an NBN service, with more than 56,000 active users.”

    Accurate? Yes. Honest? No.

  7. Heh. Too bad that those of us in Boothby without existing ADSL2 access are still stuck on ADSL1 (thanks CMUX aka 90’s FTTN) or WiMax. Im sitting here working from home on a 3/0.3mbit connection. When I was a student at high school volunteering in IT Support they had to get two 10mbit fibre lines pulled from the exchange because the area where the school is, near the shopping centre, is pretty much a broadband blackspot and will be for more than a year to come. The library had to have a microwave link installed to get more than dialup.

    So whilst St Mary’s and Blackwood (soon) will be upgraded from ADSL2 to FTTN, those of us with sub-broadband speeds in Boothby will still trundle along until H2-2017.

    • Could be worse you could live in a designated blackspot area + surrounds which had fttp rolled out only to have the LNP halt contracts so the actual blackspot area (being the hardest most $$ I guess) such that only the surrounds got FttP (couple of others as well) not the actual blackspot! Talking an unstable 1-2Mb connection even when its not raining (even T$ admit the area’s got buggered infrastructure and there’s issues).

  8. If the libs hasn’t cancelled most of the FTTP contracts with SA Power, half of Adelaide would have FTTP by now!

    • That’s so sad to remind me of that. My home was in the 2016 or 2017 FTTP zone, now it doesn’t even show up on the NBNCO database because of who knows what cheap database they replaced the real one. When I asked NBNCO why my entire apartment building wasn’t in the database they just said I have to wait until they make announcements in my area.

  9. If they remain on target to meet the EFY projections we need to see some massive weekly numbers between now and June 30th. Unlikely, but surprise us.

    • You tell us…will they meet the target?

      After all, you wrote this FUCKUP, BLOWOUT, POS, FAILED, abomination, didn’t you?

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