THE company building the National Broadband Network has hit download speeds of 105 megabits per second in a series of trials of its new fibre-to-the-node technology.
The company has conducted tests of the FTTN technology in Umina, near Woy Woy, on the NSW Central Coast, where it achieved raw download speeds of up to 105Mbps and upload speeds of up to 45 Mbps.
In the trial engineers installed a VDSL modem in a shopfront and then connected the existing copper telephone line to a node cabinet in the street.
The node cabinet, which has been erected alongside a Telstra pillar, converts electrical currents transmitted over traditional copper wires into pulses of light that can travel over optical fibres.
The results of the trial will be fodder for proponents of FTTN technology which requires access to the last few hundred metres of Telstra’s copper connections into premises.
Critics’ of FTTN have claimed that Telstra’s copper network has deteriorated to the point that it is no longer possible to get high download speeds through vectoring. Telstra has repeatedly defended the quality of network, saying it is being continuously repaired.
NBN Co chief executive Bill Morrow said the trial was an important milestone in the rollout of the NBN.
“It demonstrates that existing technologies such as the copper network can have a vital role to play in delivering high speed broadband to Australians faster, and as cost-effectively and as affordable as possible for taxpayers,” he said.
Use of FTTN is at the heart of the Coalition’s NBN policy which has proposed connecting as much of 44 per cent of the nation’s homes and businesses with the technology.
The Coalition wants to use a FTTN alongside of other broadband technologies including Telstra and Optus’s cable networks to deliver 91 per cent of Australians in the fixed-line rollout download speeds of up to 50mbps by 2019.
While FTTN technology is cheaper to deploy — as it avoids the high capital costs of the civil works needed to connect fibre directly to premises — it offers slower download and uploads speeds than Labor’s preferred fibre-to-the-premise rollout which is capable of delivering committed download speeds of 1000Mbps.
The NBN Co is now inviting retail service providers like Telstra and Optus to take part in a limited FTTN end user trial in the tested locations
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/in-depth/nbn-co-hits-105-megabits-per-second-in-fibretothen...
