Australia's National Broadband Network (nbn) has launched its first commercial HFC services on the former Telstra HFC network in Ocean Reef, Western Australia. End-users can order Internet services from retail service providers of up to 100/40 Mbps.
The public company first launched commercial HFC services in Redcliffe, Queensland, on June 30 on the former Optus network. Optus, TPG and Exetel are offering HFC services at launch.
The Telstra HFC network is expected to form the vast majority of the new nbn HFC network. By June 2017, nbn plans to have nearly 900,000 HFC premises across Australia. Around 200,000 HFC end-user premises are expected to be activated by then, and the final nbn HFC footprint is expected to be more than 3 million premises. nbn plans to launch DOCSIS 3.1 services in the second half of 2017. The nbn was originally intended to be an all-fiber network, but that idea has been shelved, largely because of cost.
John Simon, chief customer officer at nbn, said: "We will actually be one of the first operators in the world to deliver open access wholesale services over an HFC network, so we have broken a lot of new ground in these last couple of years, and now that hard work will pay off for our customers and end-users."
"There has been huge debate about the various technologies that we are using to build the nbn, but with the recent very exciting developments around new technologies like DOCSIS 3.1 and the gigabit speeds it will bring, people have begun to understand what a fantastic asset HFC networks will be for Australia."