NBN ANNOUNCEMENT: $750 million investment to help deliver faster internet services and increased data allowances in regional Australia

The Australian Government announced a significant $480 million investment in the nbn® Fixed Wireless network, as well as committing an additional $270 million to a program which will help deliver faster wholesale speeds (1) across regional Australia, benefitting thousands of homes and businesses across the country.

Many people in our regions and in our towns are on Fixed Wireless and satellite services, the announcement is wonderful news for local people and businesses.

This investment will deliver four major benefits to homes and businesses across regional and remote Australia, including:

1. Extended Fixed Wireless: Enhanced coverage and extended maximum range limit for some nbn® fixed wireless towers resulting in expansion of the fixed wireless footprint coverage by up to 50 per cent enabling approximately 120,000 formerly satellite-only eligible premises to access fixed wireless services.

2. Faster Fixed Wireless wholesale speeds (2) : Following consultation and launch, nbn proposes that homes and businesses in the expanded nbn® Fixed Wireless footprint will be able to order retail services via their service provider over nbn’s wholesale tiers proposed to offer potential maximum wholesale download speeds of up to 100 Mbps. nbn is aiming that up to an anticipated 85 per cent of the expanded footprint will also be able to order services with potential maximum wholesale download speeds of up to 250 Mbps, which is up to three times faster than the highest wholesale speeds available today.

3. Improve Fixed Wireless typical wholesale busy hour speeds (3) : Fixed Wireless network improvements are expected to allow nbn to implement a new measure to indicate the network’s capability to achieve ‘typical wholesale busy period speeds’ of at least 50Mbps (download).

4. Enhanced data limits and network performance on nbn™ Sky Muster: For the homes and businesses that remain on nbn Satellite, nbn is proposing to unmeter nbn® Sky Muster Plus data for the majority of the day with the off-peak period for unmetered data increasing to 16 hours (12am - 4pm) per day, from the current six-hour window (1am – 7am). This is anticipated to be applied from mid 2022. In addition, for regular Sky Muster, nbn is aiming to increase average monthly data allowances to 55 Gigabytes (GB), increasing to 90 GB once the fixed wireless upgrade is complete in around two and a half years’ time.

This investment follows the 2021 Regional Telecommunications Review (4) into the adequacy of telecommunications services in regional, rural and remote Australia, and forms part of the response which recommended enhancements to nbn’s Fixed Wireless and Satellite services following a step-change in demand for data and broadband in rural and regional areas.

It is also expected that the $750m investment will have a significant impact on the regional Australian economy by providing an estimated $6.1 billion boost the regional Gross Domestic Product over FY2022 to FY2026.

nbn will now work through the details of the announcement, specifically, when, where and how these improvements will be rolled out, which we expect to take around two and a half years from inception to completion (subject to further assessment through the detailed planning process). Click for more information