Australia’s largest telco has just announced a deal to provide fibre-to-the-home service at speeds up to 4G speeds.
AT&T and iiNet have signed a deal worth $30 billion.
AT+S will provide a service that can deliver up to 400Mbps (up to 10 times the speed of current copper network) to consumers in the state of NSW and the Australian Capital Territory, and ii’s new NBN will deliver speeds of up to 250Mbps.
This will give consumers access to a network of more than 1.5 million premises in the ACT, Queensland, Western Australia, New South Wales and Victoria.
The new NBN is expected to be rolled out in the fourth quarter of 2020, and the first 100 premises will be available in the second quarter of 2021.
The first 100 will also be connected to the existing copper network in Queensland, the ACT and NSW, and will be connected in the next three years.
The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has said that the service will be the first in Australia to deliver up-to 100Mbps per home.
However, this may be a stretch, as many Australian homes are connected to cable, not fibre.
AT-Cable, one of the biggest providers of home broadband services in Australia, is currently offering services at speeds of between 1Gbps and 5Gbps, depending on which speed you choose.
This is because the speed limit is set to the maximum speed that is allowed under current law, but the company is aiming to increase the speed up to 2Gbps for the first of this year.
ii has said in the past that it would support its customers to reach their maximum speeds if the law allows it.
This announcement from AT&, which has been under regulatory scrutiny for some time, follows similar deals that were announced earlier this year with Sky, Optus and Telstra.
These deals also offered customers the ability to subscribe to fibre at speeds exceeding 4G, and they were only available to those who subscribed to the AT& plan at the time.
ATs deal will likely increase competition in Australia’s market, but it is likely that these speeds will only be offered to the majority of Australians who already have fibre connections.