Employees work in front of their computers at the Vente-Privee.com company's headquarters in Saint-Denis near Paris October 24, 2013.
Employees work in front of their computers at the Vente-Privee.com company's headquarters in Saint-Denis near Paris October 24, 2013. Reuters/Charles Platiau

NBN Co is expecting to add 550,000 premises to its construction program ending in Sept. 2016 to connect about 3.97 million of Australia’s homes and businesses by 2017. A spokesman for the company said it would take about 12 months for the construction work to begin.

The additional new premises will be located in Noosa in Sunshine Coast in Queensland. There are more than 870,000 premises currently connected to NBN. The company has committed to use its high-speed cable technology known as the Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification 3.1 to boost the HFC networks NBN bought from Optus and Telstra.

NBN has also announced that it will be pushing through with plans for its Fibre-to-the-Basement commercial offering. SMH reports that about 90,000 premises will be added to the FTTB service by 2015 and a million more across the Australia by 2020.

Bill Morrow from NBN said the company wants to ensure that more Australians will have access to fast broadband service as soon as possible. He added that homes and businesses in the country will enjoy the benefits of upgrading Australia’s broadband infrastructure.

Morrow remarked that the company’s quarterly forecasts will help customers including internet service and telephone providers, to begin planning on how broadband services will be delivered to these communities. NBN said customers connected to the premises are in line to benefit from average download speeds of up to 89 megabits per second and up to 36 mbps of upload speed, reports Business Spectator.

Communications minister Malcolm Turnbull was in Melbourne to launch the new FTTB service. He visited car merchandise outlet Forza Italia, one of the first businesses to receive FTTB. Turnbull said the business is able to operate its supply chain and point of sale using the cloud due to the efficiency of NBN’s product.

NBN Co’s chief customer officer John Simmon said customers should expect to see the successful launch of the FTTB, highlighting the role of using current infrastructure in providing fast broadband. With the FTTB launch, NBN can compete with TPG Telecom that caters to high-revenue locations with its own fibre network.

To report problems or leave feedback on this article, contact: r.su@ibtimes.com.au

RELATED STORIES