asked the Minister representing the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, in writing, on 8 February 2011:

Under the NBN Co Limited’s planning, (a) how many homes will share a Gigabit capable Passive Optical Network fibre optic link, (b) what is the expected capacity of the link, and (c) what capacity per home does this translate to.

The Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy has provided the following answer to the honourable member’s question:

(a) NBN Co has developed engineering rules that result in a Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON) being shared by a maximum of 32 end users. NBN Co expects the practical average across the fibre footprint to be around 28 end users per GPON.

(b) The expected downstream capacity of these GPON links is 2.488 gigabits per second and the expected upstream capacity is 1.244 gigabits per second1. The total GPON link capacity is shared dynamically amongst end users, according to each end user’s instant requirements and their individual access service.

(c) NBN Co’s initial service offering presents individual GPON end users with an aggregate data capacity of up to 100 megabits per second. In addition, the end user hardware that NBN Co is installing supports an aggregate data capacity of 1 gigabit per second.

Based on these specifications and typical statistical dimensioning employed across the Australian and international telecommunications industry, NBN Co’s GPON platform can be expected to support typical household capacities of up to 1 gigabit per second.

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1 International Telecommunications Union (ITU) G.948 standard.