Next week's federal budget will commit $480 million towards upgrading the National Broadband Network's fixed wireless network with advancements in 5G technology.
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The project will also receive an additional $270 million from NBN Co, for a total of $750 million investment in delivering faster speeds to up to one million homes and businesses across regional, rural and remote Australia. The upgrade is expected to take two and a half years once planning is complete.
Coverage area of NBN fixed wireless towers will increase by approximately 50 per cent, enabling 120,000 former satellite-only premises to access the increased speeds and data allowances of the fixed wireless service.
The network will offer new higher wholesale speeds of 100 Megabits per second to all 750,000 premises in the expanded coverage footprint, and a 250 Mbps service to 85 per cent of the premises.
The so-called "network busy hour" of 8pm, when it is most heavily used, has a current target of achieving a speed of 6 Mbps. But this will rise to 50 Mbps after the upgrade.
Satellite users will see their monthly data allowances increased to 55 Gigabytes in the short term, increasing to 90 GB once the upgrade is complete.
NBN's chief development officer for regional and remote Gavin Williams said demand had been growing rapidly, with the upgrade expected to support the regional Australian economy with an additional $6.1 billion in regional GDP between 2022 and 2026.
"We will commence detailed planning shortly. After that is completed, we expect the roll out will take around two and a half years - subject to further assessment through the detailed planning process," Mr Williams said.
Communications Minister Paul Fletcher said the government's investment in critical infrastructure like the NBN would help meet the government's goal of Australia becoming a top ten data and digital economy by 2030.
"By using the latest 4G and 5G wireless technology, this upgrade will extend the coverage range from a tower, and allow higher speed services to everyone served by the tower," Mr Fletcher said.
"This means more people can be served by NBN fixed wireless; it means higher speed services on the NBN fixed wireless network; and it means higher amounts of data can be used by households and business customers."
NBN's fibre coverage areas were the focus of a $4.5 billion network upgrade announced in late 2020 to deliver on promised speeds between 500Mbps and 1 Gbps.
Federal Labor has previously announced it would go the next election with a NBN commitment to expand optional full-fibre upgrades to an additional 1.5 million homes by 2025.