NBN Co – the company building Australia’s national wholesale broadband access network – has activated its first Fibre-to-the-Curb (FTTC) premises as part of its ongoing trials of the ground-breaking network technology in Coburg, a northern suburb of Melbourne.
In connecting a trial premises to FTTC the company has achieved speeds of 109Mbps downstream and 44Mbps upstream using VDSL technology over a 70 metre copper line that serves the premises.
FTTC works by delivering new fibre all the way to the property boundary where it connects to a Distribution Point Unit (DPU) in a telecom pit that then connects to the existing copper lines serving the premises.
FTTC delivers substantial time and cost savings when compared to competing technologies including Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) where driveways often require trenching, or Fibre-to-the-Node (FTTN) which requires mains power to the node.
NBN Co is leading the world in the deployment of FTTC technology and is planning to launch commercial services in the first half of 2018.
NBN Co expects to serve an initial 1 million premises with FTTC and estimates the technology will cost around $2,900 per premises to deliver compared to $4,400 for FTTP.