Some areas of Ararat will soon have the kind of internet reserved for inner Melbourne.
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Due to the regulations that govern how the National Broadband Network is planned and rolled out, some parts of Ararat’s eastern residential areas will have full fibre-optic internet connections.
Ararat resident Matt Pearce lives in one of the few houses in east Ararat that will receive full-fibre NBN rather than a copper-based or wireless connection.
Mr Pearce said he was glad to be getting NBN with a maximum speed double the average user as he streams a lot of television and films through Netflix and Foxtel.
His children also have their own tablets and smartphones and a PlayStation games console hooked up to the internet.
“With current ADSL2+ speeds brings slower than a carrier pigeon, I’m quite excited to find out I’m getting the highest level of NBN installation,” he said.
When the internet infrastructure project was announced in 2007 by then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, 98 per cent of homes were planned to have a Fibre-to-the-Premises (FttP) connections.
Following the Coalition’s victory in 2013, the project was altered to have most homes on Fibre-to-the-Node (FttN), a technology that relies on existing copper phone lines to connect each household.
Then Communications Minister (now Prime Minister) Malcolm Turnbull said the changes would make the NBN cheaper to install over a shorter time frame.
Critics claim that using copper lines will make the NBN slower, less reliable and harder to upgrade.
The NBN has a minimum standard speed of 25 megabits per second, which is about twice as fast as the best performing landline broadband currently available in Ararat.
Fairfax Media understands that NBN installers cannot guarantee those minimum speeds in some parts of Ararat.
In those areas, installers will skip the ‘nodes’ and run fibre-optic cables direct to each household.
For example, some houses on Grano Street between the railway line and Burn Street will receive full-fibre connections while the surrounding areas will receive FttN or fixed-wireless connections.
About 1.2 million users are full fibre, which is usually found in capital cities and new housing developments.
Individual households and businesses in Ararat and elsewhere can check which NBN technology they are set to receive by entering their address on the online rollout map.
The NBN rollout has started in Ararat and is due to be completed by December.
Areas outside Ararat already have access to the NBN via fixed-wireless and satellite services.