NBN ‘kills’ 100mbps fixed wireless product

EARLIER this year, NBN told Parliament that 300,000 customers on fixed wireless would be able to get to speeds of 100mbps. It has now quietly walked that back.

IF YOU live in regional areas of the country being serviced by fixed wireless in the NBN rollout, we’ve got some bad news.

Australians won’t be able to get speeds of 100 megabits per second under the national broadband network’s fixed wireless product, the company behind the rollout has conceded.

NBN Co has quietly axed the plan to provide the top speed tier over its fixed wireless towers, a move set to impact more than 300,000 potential customers.

NBN chief executive Bill Morrow made the revelation to a Senate hearing on Thursday, despite a committee being told earlier this year that 50 per cent of premises could have access to such speeds by the end of the rollout.

“We killed it,” Mr Morrow told senators in Canberra.

Fixed wireless uses mobile phone towers to provide broadband to properties in regional areas and doesn’t have the capacity or bandwidth to support the same level of users or traffic compared to fixed line connections.

Mr Morrow — who will step down as CEO by the end of the year — said consistently achieving 100mbps would cost “billions and billions of dollars”. Due to the “outrages” expense, the company quietly nixed the idea.

By the end of its rollout, the NBN’s fixed wireless technology will be available to more than 600,000 customers.

In January this year, NBN Co told Parliament half of those customers would be able to access top speeds if they chose to buy the requisite plan from their retail provider however that promise has quickly failed to materialise.

Mr Morrow defended the decision saying while the economics were unviable, there was unlikely to be much demand for such speeds.

“There is no economic model that would work,” he said. “It’s hard to find applications that warrant the need for 100 mbps.”