Australia’s nbn selects FTTC supplier

Australia’s nbn – the company building the National Broadband Network – has selected NetComm Wireless to supply equipment for the fiber to the curb (FTTC) proportion of the rollout.

NetComm Wireless will supply the distribution point units for the deployment, which will be one of the world’s first wide-scale rollouts of FTTC technology.

FTTC involves delivering fiber to the telecoms pit outside a building, using existing copper lines from the pit to the home. This technique brings fiber closer to the end-user than FTTN.

NetComm Wireless, a Sydney-based equipment supplier, appears to have beaten out global vendors such as existing NBN partner Nokia for the contract.

The agreement follows successful trials of FTTC in Sydney and Melbourne conducted by nbn, which achieved end-user speeds of 100/40Mbps using VDSL vectoring technology.

“nbn is delighted to bring NetComm Wireless on board as a technology partner. We have tested FTTC over the past year and we’re confident we can now deploy the technology in areas where it makes better sense from a customer experience, deployment efficiency and cost perspective,” nbn Chief Network Engineering Officer Paul Ryan said.

“Delivering FTTC will not only allow us to deliver speeds of up to 100/40Mbps using VDSL but will also allow us to offer even faster speeds in the future with some of the new technologies that are becoming available.”

But industry groups such as Internet Australia have been sharply critical of the current government’s decision to switch from a planned all-FTTP deployment for the vast majority of the network to a multi-technology mix making use of existing copper last mile connections.

Critics of the decision have argued that the multi-technology mix model will require further expense to upgrade rapidly aging copper with fiber for the last mile in 10-15 years if not sooner.