NBN Co Telstra to conduct 1000 node FTTN trial
Telstra will conduct a 1,000-node FTTN trial as part of the NBN roll-out according to Communications Minister @TurnbullMalcolm.
Speaking on the ABC’s 7.30 programme on Thursday night (6 June), Turnbull said that #NBN Co was currently “finalising the discussions with Telstra to do a big thousand-node trial .. which will then roll into the full fibre-to-the-node rollout”.
No details were offered as to the location –or locations - of the trial but it would make sense for it to include either a major regional or urban fringe area.
One of the many unanswered questions about the NBN roll-out is the best way of servicing premises that lie on the edge of the wireline/wireless border of the network. A relatively large-scale trial could be expected to shed light on this question.
And it should also provide further insight into the state of the copper “last mile” that the NBN will use under the Coalition’s #FTTN model.
It is this section of the network which, above all, has suffered as a result of maintenance short-cuts over the last decade or more. The costs of such remediation as will be needed to ensure it can support the Coalition’s performance targets still remain unknown.
Last but not least, the trial should help clarify questions as to how this section of the roll-out can be delivered most efficiently from a construction point of view ie. what role Telstra and the current NBN Co prime contractors will play, respectively.
The CWU will be pursuing this question with Telstra in the coming weeks.
