7 out of 8 Aussie households still can’t get the NBN
Almost 1.2 million premises are now connected to the National Broadband Network.
August 24 2015: nbn, which is responsible for building the high-speed National Broadband Network (NBN) in Australia, has now run the service past almost 1.2 million premises.
That's double the number at this time last year (553,000), but it still falls well short of the company's stated goal to reach 8 million premises by 2020. The roll-out will need to accelerate for that to happen.
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Mind you, not everyone who can take advantage of higher-speed connections has yet signed up. The number of active premises is 486,000 -- a little over a third of those which could potentially take advantage of a connection. Last year, the equivalent figure was 210,000 users. Here are the technologies nbn customers are using: as you'd expect, fibre-to-the-home dominates.
| Connection | Customers |
|---|---|
| Fibre | 399,854 |
| Fixed wireless | 47,473 |
| Satellite | 28,288 |
| Total | 38,288 |
We're getting keener on speed. 18% of fibre connections were to the top-speed 100/40 service. 42% were on 25/5, while 35% were on the basic 12/1 service.
Those customer numbers should increase over the next year. Fibre-to-the-building connections for apartment blocks, which nbn has been trialling this year, will be on offer for general sale from this quarter. The two satellites being used for very remote customers will launch on 1 October this year, though those services won't be on sale until the second half of 2016. nbn also expects to begin offering cable services, acquired from Telstra and Optus, over the next year.
