The company responsible for rolling out the National Broadband Network has made an announcement: it has chosen Nokia to deploy its broadband tech on the NBN.
The deal will see NBN Co deploy Nokia’s latest MF series Optical Line Terminals (MF-14) and the Altiplano Access Controller on the NBN network. NBN Co reckons this will result in a significant increase in flexibility, improved customer experience and the option to support higher capacity broadband technologies.
“It will allow NBN to move from the wholesale residential gigabit speeds offered today to multi-gigabit residential speeds across the NBN Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) network and help address Australia’s broadband needs well into the future,” the company wrote in a statement.
NBN Co said that in November, the NBN network reached a record peak rate of 22.35 terabits per second downstream traffic, and that this number is expected to increase up to 100 terabits per second in the next ten years.
NBN Co also reckons using Nokia’s tech will help with its Towards-Zero Carbon Ambition, but little detail was given, except that it will help decrease the overall power consumption of the network.
“By leading the deployment of this next-generation technology, we can help meet our nation’s data demands now and into the future,” NBN Co CEO Steven Rue said.
Expanding on the tech to be used, Nokia said its Altiplano Access Controller is a software-defined (SDN) and network function virtualisation (NFV) tool used to drive greater automation and virtualisation (it’s in the name, I guess).
Nokia said it “enables innovation in the way the network is managed with an open API to automate and program the network”.
In October, NBN Co announced that 1.5 million FTTN homes and businesses would be getting a fibre upgrade for their NBN connections, making them faster. This technology type (which will take the form of FTTP) can achieve higher speeds than every other type of NBN in the country.