most recently earlier this year.<\/a><\/p>\nWhat is now clear is just how many premises NBN Co is willing to offer a free upgrade to.<\/p>\n
iTnews asked an NBN Co spokesperson for assistance to decipher and reconcile the various figures in the ASIP concerning premises with troubled copper connections that qualify for the free fibre upgrade.<\/p>\n
What it boils down to is:<\/p>\n
By H1 FY26, over 1 million premises will qualify for an FTTP upgrade without needing to order a high-speed tier service.
\nAs of June 30 2025, approximately 700,000 premises were eligible for a fibre upgrade \u201cwithout necessarily being required to order a high-speed tier of 100Mbps and above”, the spokesperson said.
\nOf those 700,000, around 500,000 have underperforming lines or are in what NBN Co calls its \u201cfibre assurance footprint\u201d.\u00a0
\nTo be in the \u201cassurance footprint\u201d, a connection has to have problems with \u201cspeed, reliability, stability, and [other] network-related factors”. It could also be storm-damaged.
\nOut of the 500,000, about 110,000 had successfully upgraded as of June 30, \u201cwithout necessarily ordering a high-speed tier\u201d service.
\nThe remaining 200,000 premises in the 700,000 \u201chave never connected to the NBN, so fibre has been prioritised as the connection method, rather than NBN Co rolling out new copper,\u201d the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n
The next 300K<\/p>\n
That leaves 300,000 additional premises that now also qualify for an unconditional – or less conditional – fibre upgrade.<\/p>\n
Exactly what type of premises these are isn’t entirely clear, but they could be from the FTTC footprint.<\/p>\n
NBN Co has only recently been able to trial \u201cassurance fibre upgrades for 30,000 FTTC customers\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cUpon completion of the trial, NBN Co plans to expand this process to cover underperforming FTTC lines more broadly in early FY26,\u201d the company said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis initiative aims to address the needs of FTTC customers who are facing reduced speeds, instability, or repeat assurance issues due to the limitations of copper lines.\u201d<\/p>\n
It said that \u201ctechnical limitations\u201d had previously thwarted its ability to offer these users fibre upgrades.<\/p>\n
Expanding the upgrades \u201cwill ensure that the same process is applied to all underperforming FTTN\/C lines that cannot achieve at least 50Mbps,\u201d the company said.<\/p>\n
FTTB upgrade path tested under ‘limited trials’<\/p>\n
One cohort of NBN users still largely not covered in upgrade plans is the fibre-to-the-basement (FTTB) footprint, dominated by multi-dwelling unit (MDU) developments.<\/p>\n
The ASIP notes that \u201ca full fibre upgrade for the FTTB footprint is not currently planned\u201d.<\/p>\n
However, some potentially promising news for users is that \u201climited trials for FTTB to FTTP upgrades are in progress.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThese trials aim to provide key insights into customer responsiveness and market opportunities,\u201d NBN Co wrote.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe findings from these trials will help inform future strategy.\u201d<\/p>\n
MDU upgrades<\/p>\n
NBN Co does have an upgrade path for MDUs in the FTTN and FTTC footprint, which it is calling the full fibre upgrade strata or FFUS program.<\/p>\n
This has a different set of eligibility criteria.<\/p>\n
\u201c[We] currently offer full fibre upgrades to eligible MDU customers within the FTTN and FTTC footprint with a customer co-contribution of $275 per premise,\u201d the company wrote.<\/p>\n
\u201cMoving into FY26 and FY27, NBN Co plans to scale fibre connectivity in the FTTN\/FTTC footprint to meet the growing demand for high-speed internet services.\u201d<\/p>\n
For everyone else, your incentive is still fibre<\/p>\n
For most FTTN and FTTC users, the requirement to commit to a 100\/20Mbps plan to trigger a full fibre upgrade will stay.<\/p>\n
It’s revealed in the ASIP that retail service providers (RSPs) had been lobbying NBN Co to run a ‘try before you buy’ style campaign to encourage more users to transition.<\/p>\n
This isn’t a new idea: for years, NBN Co ran similar programs to shift customers off more basic tiers, or to encourage them to trial the faster speeds.<\/p>\n
As noted by RSPs, “There is … a portion of [the customer] base that are happy\u00a0with their existing NBN speed tier and show\u00a0no\u00a0interest in increasing their existing speed.”<\/p>\n
“In order to\u00a0encourage these customers to move off copper-based services, NBN Co needs to consider incentives such as a no cost speed upgrade (for\u00a0example 100\/20 speeds for 12 months of the 50\/20\u00a0Mbps price \u2013 a try before you buy option with\u00a0the option for the customer to downgrade back\u00a0to 50\/20 at the end of a 12-month trial without\u00a0a downgrade\u00a0penalty).”<\/p>\n
NBN Co didn’t rule it out entirely, but “deferred [it] for future consideration”.<\/p>\n
“Given current upgrade volumes, NBN Co does not believe the \u2018try before you buy\u2019 proposal is appropriate to pursue at this point in time, but appreciate the proposal and may consider it at a future time,” it responded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NBN Co is set to allow over 1 million premises with problem copper lines to upgrade to fibre…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25001,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[64,63,237,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-25000","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-internet","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-internet","11":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25000"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25000\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}