Australia NBN Will Miss Target of 25 Mbps to All by 2016

Australia's National Broadband Network will miss its original target of providing 25 megabits per second service to all Australians by 2016. Plagued by construction delays, the timetable slippage is not unexpected. 

A strategic review of the program also will rely more substantially on upgrades to cable TV hybrid fiber coax networks, and substitutes fiber to node for fiber to home connections for as much as a third of the network access connections.

According to the new strategy, about 26 percent of premises will be connected using fiber to home networks. Some 30 percent will be reached by cable TV hybrid fiber coax connections, while 44 percent will get fiber to the node drops, moves intended to reduce the overall cost of the NBN and also likely speed deployment times, at the cost of immediate speed upgrades.