NBN Co deploys fresh copper to new homes

NBN Co has furnished almost 3300 new homes and apartments with fibre-to-the-node or fibre-to-the-basement connections, showing the impact of a policy change made at the end of last year.

The network builder said today that as of June 7, it had declared 3291 premises ready for service in “new estates/developments” that had been cabled either with FTTN or FTTB.

It said back in May that about eight percent of all new housing developments would be served by FTTN technology by 2022.

This was enabled by a policy change that enabled NBN Co to stop deploying fibre exclusively to newly built homes and apartment blocks. Now, the company can deploy FTTP, FTTN or FTTB.

This comes at a time when Telstra – which also has responsibility for some greenfields estates – is also still deploying copper in new developments under 100 premises.

Telstra was deploying copper in 417 new developments back in January 2016; that figure appears to have increased to around 2649 new developments in the latest data reported by the government, which is current to last month.

Similar NBN Co data hasn’t been updated since March of last year.

NBN Co has previously said that FTTN-cabled new developments would “largely be in-fill developments”; new developments that are within the boundaries of an existing FTTN area.