NBN Co. and Australian incumbent telco Telstra have decided to hold off on disconnecting copper-based services in 58 areas where fiber-based broadband service is now being offered to consumers and businesses.
Although the two companies originally intended to shut down the copper-based services in these fiber serving area modules (FSAMs) during the Christmas and New Year period, they delayed those plans to ensure that affected users would be notified of the impending disconnection.
An unnamed NBN Co. spokesperson told iTnews that the time frame had been shifted "so everyone can enjoy their summer holiday period."
In addition, the two companies have decided to organize the disconnection dates into three groups falling once a month, so they can "reduce the number of dates and simplify the approach" for wholesale carrier customers and end-users. As a result, the 58 FSAMs will now either be disconnected on Feb. 20, 2015, March 20, 2015, or April 17, 2015.
NBN Co. shut down copper-based DSL and associated services for 31 FSAMs in 15 of the first regions that received fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) services in May 2014. This initiative affected 19,000 homes and businesses.
At the same time, Telstra and the NBN Co. are making progress with a $121 million deal to connect 260,000 premises to a fiber-to-the-node (FTTN) hybrid copper-and-fiber network, an approach favored by the Australian government's Coalition party.
For more:
- iTnews has this article
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