Australian government-backed National Broadband Network (nbn) said 3 million premises on its broadband access network have been activated, with another 3 million that are now ready to connect.
Nbn said about 1 million premises have been activated in the past six months, with 1.4 million premises connected to fiber-to-the-node and HFC networks activated in that past 18 months.
That’s significant, nbn said, because it took nearly five years for it to reach 1 million activated premises using mostly fiber-to-the-premises access network technology.
Nbn currently expects to activate a total of 4.5 million premises from June 2017 to June 2019.
Nbn has been working toward a goal to provide high speed wholesale access and connect 8 million homes and businesses by 2020 using a mix of access technologies, including HFC, fixed wireless, satellite, fiber-to-the-node, and fiber-to-the-premises. Arris is a key player for the HFC portion of nbn’s upgrade plan.
“We’re regularly activating more than 40,000 premises every week, which means we’re pretty much activating a city the size of Canberra every single month. This huge increase naturally puts pressure on the customer service experience,” Peter Ryan, nbn’s chief networking engineering officer, said in a statement
Expect more insight on nbn’s progress this week at the SCTE•ISBE Cable-Tec Expo in Denver.
The ISBE International Attendee Breakfast, set for this Friday (Oct. 20) from 7:30 a.m. to 9 a.m. MT (rooms 605/607) at the Colorado Convention Center, will feature a panel with Andrew Baxter, general manager, HFC engineering, nbn; Steve McCaffery, president, international sales, international business operations, Arris; and Chris Bastian, SVP, engineering/CTO, SCTE•ISBE.
Read More: Complete coverage of Cable-Tec Expo 2017
The discussion is expected to cover topics and technologies such as 5G, the Internet of Things, 8K, virtual reality and augmented reality.
Nbn recently became a member of the SCTE•ISBE Corporate Alliance Partner Program, and joined the service provider ranks at CableLabs earlier this year.
