Australia’s National Broadband Network (NBN) is the largest public sector investment in broadband to replace existing copper infrastructure with fiber. Government decided to build and operate a wholesale network to encourage competition on that retail fixed broadband and achieve faster infrastructure buildout with higher quality and lower retail prices. The NBN aimed to connect 93 percent of Australian households and businesses (13 million premises) to a wholesale fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) but downgraded to fiber-to-the-node (FTTN) as a result of escalating costs and political change. In further attempts to bring down the cost and adopt a more deliverable strategy, the current administration is considering a gradual sell-off of the NBN network.
