SOON up to 32,467 homes in Wannon will benefit from faster internet after a $480 million NBN funding investment by the Federal Government that was announced in the 2022-2023 Federal Budget.

“Wannon has made their voice heard through the Regional Telecommunications Review – telecommunications matter for every community, including ours, and this is very much a welcome investment in the region’s future,” Wannon MP, Dan Tehan said.

“Having access to reliable and high-speed internet can really make a difference for people in our community, whether that be families connecting with loved ones, to business owners selling goods here and overseas.”

Communications, Urban Infrastructure, Cities and the Arts minister, Paul Fletcher, said the 2022-2023 budget allocation in NBN Co’s non-commercial fixed wireless network will significantly improve the quality of services being provided over the NBN fixed wireless and satellite networks.

“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,” he 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.

The upgrade will expand the fixed wireless footprint coverage by up to 50 per cent, enabling 120,000 additional premises to access fixed wireless services instead of Sky Muster satellite services.”

The NBN will offer new higher speed services to the fixed wireless network: 100 Megabits per second (Mbps) to all 750,000 premises able to access the new, expanded coverage footprint, and a 250 Mbps service will be available to 85 per cent of premises.

It also means much higher actual speeds during the “network busy hour” – the time of day when the network is most heavily used, typically around 8pm at night.

The network design metric for the busy hour today is six Mbps; this will rise sharply following the upgrade, to 50 Mbps.

This means customers will benefit even if they do not order a higher speed plan, as they will experience a sharp increase in the actual speed of their current plan.

This upgrade also means big benefits for NBN satellite users - because some existing NBN satellite customers will move to fixed wireless, this will free up capacity on the satellite network.

As a result, NBN Co will be able to offer an almost immediate increase in average data allowances for NBN Sky Muster satellite users.

Average monthly data allowances for standard Sky Muster plans will increase to 55 Gigabytes (GB) in the short term, increasing to 90GB once the fixed wireless upgrade is complete in around two years’ time.