You Might Be Getting a Huge NBN Speed Boost in May

Millions of homes serviced by the NBN’s HFC connection type are about to get a maximum speed boost, that will see them capable of up to 970Mbps.

NBN Co has been on a speed-boosting roll lately, in between its announced plan to boost NBN 100 to NBN 500 for HFC/FTTP connections, and its plan to boost speeds of fixed wireless users. Such upgrades were bound to happen eventually, technology like the NBN has only been improving over the past decade, but also NBN Co has come under increased competition from fixed-line alternatives, such as 5G and satellite plans.

Cast your mind back to 2020, when the NBN 250 ‘Superfast’ and NBN 1000 ‘Ultrafast’ plans were first introduced. At the time, these plans were only made available to FTTP and HFC homes – though a cap was placed upon most HFC connections to limit maximum speeds to 750Mbps to help manage capacity.

First reported by iTnews, the company responsible for the NBN network is removing the cap. A spokesperson told Gizmodo Australia that sustained improvements of the network are allowing for HFC connections “to be more closely aligned to those experienced by customers with full fibre Fibre to the Premises connections”.

“Put simply, NBN Home Ultrafast customers will enjoy consistently faster speeds, rather than the fluctuation between sustained information rate of around 750 Mbps and short-term potential burst speeds of up to 970 Mbps,” the spokesperson said.

It’s a huge upgrade for homes connected via HFC, of which there are reportedly 2.5 million premises across Australia, or roughly 20 per cent of the Australia-wide network.

NBN Co confirmed that the cap would be removed from May 1, 2024. Service providers won’t need to do anything to facilitate the upgrade, and it won’t require any outages.

Image: NBN Co, Disney