Next week’s federal budget will include $480 million to improve regional internet speeds and allow more customers to access the NBN’s fixed wireless service.
The NBN will spend an additional $270 million on the planned upgrade.
“The upgrade will expand the fixed wireless footprint coverage by up to 50 per cent, enabling 120,000 additional premises to access fixed wireless services instead of Sky Muster satellite services,” Communications Minister Paul Fletcher said.
Fixed wireless technology involves internet signal being beamed from a provider’s base tower to an antenna on the customer’s roof.
It is viewed as superior to the NBN’s Sky Muster satellite offering, and news that its footprint is being expanded will likely be welcomed in regional Australia.
“By using the latest 4G and 5G wireless technology, this upgrade will extend the coverage range from a tower and allow higher speed services to everyone served by the tower,” Mr Fletcher said.
Faster internet speeds
Slow internet speeds have seen some regional customers spending hundreds of dollars purchasing entrepreneur Elon Musk’s Starlink internet offering.
It promises fast download speeds of up to 250 megabits per second and happy customers say they are receiving them.
The government said its upgrade would see the NBN’s fixed wireless service offer speeds of 100 megabits per second (mbps) to all 750, 000 premises in its expanded footprint, with 85 per cent of those services able to access 250 mbps.
After the upgrade, the planned peak busy period (around 8pm) average speed is expected to rise to at least 50 mbps.
To give context, this is on par with typical peak speeds experienced by many city customers on fixed line connections.
The government believes more regional customers moving to fixed wireless should free up capacity for customers who remain on the NBN Sky Muster satellite service.
As a result, the government said NBN would be able to increase data allowances for Sky Muster customers.
Black spot work urged
In its media release, the NBN said it was proposing to “unmeter” Sky Muster Plus (NBN’s premium satellite service) data for the majority of the day, with the off-peak period for unmetered data increasing to 16 hours (12am to 4pm) per day, from the current six-hour window (1am to 7am).
“This is anticipated to be applied from mid-2022,” the statement said.
“In addition, for regular Sky Muster, NBN is aiming to increase average monthly data allowances to 55 gigabytes (GB), increasing to 90GB once the NBN Fixed Wireless upgrade is complete in around two and a half years.”
Telecommunications analyst Paul Budde said the funding was an “excellent development” but warned throwing money at regional internet problems was not enough.
“We need to much better map the blackspots, the uncovered areas, the marginal areas of the service footprints,” he said.
“Once we have such a map we can link to the usage patterns in these areas and as a result, much better target upgrades where they are needed.”
