This week, NBN got some new high-ranking staff, a larger trial of the preferred fibre to the node tech was announced, almost 200,000 premises have hooked up to the ‘net through NBN, and over 100,000 more need more work done to get there.
NBN Co has a new chief technology officer, as well as a new CFO, under boss Bill Morrow’s plan to restructure the company’s leadership team. The transformation from Labor government-run organisation to Liberal government-run organisation is nearly complete — the only thing left is to change the rollout to fibre to the node.
A thousand-node test of that technology is being planned by Telstra and NBN Co, which could be used to demonstrate the real-world results of FTTN service to end users. No proper NBN trial of fibre to the node in realistic conditions with a large number of test subjects has been done before, so hopefully this larger trial should demonstrate the potential of the technology.
NBN Co has updated its rollout maps to include the areas being prepared for construction. The latest report from NBN Co says that 195,000 premises — both homes and businesses — are up and running on the NBN with an active service.
However, in addition to those 195,000, 118,000 other premises that should be connected to the NBN aren’t — the pipes that connect houses and businesses to the street are either damaged or missing, and require repairs that could cost over $100 million to fix.