NBN deployment achieves annual goal

Australia's National Broadband Network project experienced a solid year during the 12 months leading up to June 2013, meeting installation goals and gathering a good number of subscribers along the way.

The NBN, despite the controversy that has surrounded it, has had a positive year as a vital private-public partnership. During the past 12 months, more than 207,500 premises have been passed with fiber-optic cabling. This represents both Brownfieldand Greenfield properties. Furthermore, the NBN now boasts approximately 70,000 homes and businesses subscribing to services.

Considering the NBN's growth
The NBN ran into a major hitch earlier in its development when deployment experienced a 10-week delay. However, its revised targets were realistic and network implementation achieved that goal. This has left the NBN on target for its goal to pass 93 percent of Australian homes with fiber by 2021. The ambition of the NBN, and cost of meeting that level of FTTH deployment so quickly, has led to some controversy about the network. However, customers seem to be buying into the vision for the NBN, as current subscriber rates are fairly impressive.

More than 33,600 of the 70,000 homes passed with fiber are using optical cabling for connectivity. Many others are using the FTTH network to gain access to fixed wireless and satellite connectivity options, both of which have seen increased adoption during the NBN project's development.

Mike Quigley, CEO for the NBN, explained that current success in FTTH deployment is a positive sign for the NBN moving forward.

"These results are pleasing because they demonstrate that the steps we put in place in March to accelerate the rollout have been successful," said Quigley. "They provide us with confidence that NBN is on track to deliver fast, reliable and affordable broadband to every family and business in Australia over the remaining eight years of this decade-long build. They also show that NBN, together with its industry partners, has the capacity to overcome the challenges inherent in rolling out Australia's largest national infrastructure project."

Dealing with FTTH challenges
Interoperability is one of the greatest challenges faced by organizations deploying FTTH infrastructure, and fiber to Ethernet media converters can help companies resolve those issues. Media converters provide a vital interconnectionbetween fiber systems and the copper Ethernet architectures that are installed in most homes and businesses. Because of this, media converters play a vital role in helping organizations deploy FTTH systems.

Perle has an extensive range of Managed and Unmanaged Fiber Media Converters to extended copper-based Ethernet equipment over a fiber optic link, multimode to multimode and multimode to single mode fiber up to 160km.