NBN reaches 10 million homes – Milestone a year out from completion

10,005,024 to be exact. That’s the number of homes that are deemed “Ready to Connect” to the National Broadband Network.

After years of building, the network is passing thousands of homes every day, with around 1,000 homes connecting to the NBN every working hour of the day.

In terms of the number of homes that have connected to the NBN and chosen a retail plan – that number now sits at 5,654,290 – a staggering number by anyones measure.

NBN are still committed to the 2020 roll-out target, stating today “This major milestone comes with less than twelve months of the build remaining”

The network is finished once we get to 11.6 million homes ready to connect. The NBN’s business plan is based on 75% of homes connecting to the network which means we are at 65% of the planned total connected homes.

Every home has 18 months to connect to the network after they are deemed “Ready to Connect” so the lag between availability and connection numbers will continue until at least the end of 2021.

We get a lot of emails about the NBN and calls on Talkback Radio – and while many still have concerns about the NBN, the vast majority of issues are solved with one of two diagnosis:

1. Choosing a better speed plan and internet provider
2. Ensuring your home network is capable of the speeds you are expecting.

The NBN brings one great thing to Aussies – choice. While many spent years locked in with just a handful of telcos, today there’s a vast number to choose from. Each provider differs in each area of the country based on the amount of bandwidth they have in the area, and the number of customers they have using that bandwidth.

Additionally, many people are just “put” onto an NBN plan – when connecting to the NBN you need to consider which speed plan is right for you – they are broadly NBN 25, 50 and 100. If you want decent speeds that are a step up from what you had before, you need to choose the 50 or 100 plan.

Finally, your home environment can have a big effect on your speeds. Having 100mbps speeds coming into the home won’t be any good if you have a shoddy WiFi network which can’t share that 100 around the home. A modern MESH WiFi system like Netgear Orbi or Google WiFi will change everything for the better.

A long way to go for the NBN, but the finish line is near. The biggest issue we have to face as a nation is what next – how do we ensure the NBN is funded or making enough money to build the next phase which are upgrades for the millions of Fibre to the Node connections around the country.