Armidale homes trial Vodafone NBN services

Unlimited downloads, free of charge.
Nine Armidale residents have been offered free broadband services over the National Broadband Network with unlimited downloads as part of Vodafone's first trials of the fibre network.

By Christmas these customers, current mobile customers with the telco, will be testing Vodafone Australia's first fixed-line broadband product.

The company has spent seven months since signing NBN trial agreements establishing the necessary internal infrastructure and undergoing on-boarding tests with NBN Co to prepare the trials.

Vodafone will ultimately use the network to provide both fixed-line services and operate a backhaul link to mobile base stations.

Over the next three to four months, the telco hopes to expand the trial to 30 or 40 volunteers across Armidale, Kiama and Brunswick before deciding how to price services and install connections for customers.

The telco will test the network at each of the NBN's four speed tiers, plus a unicast version of fetchtv IPTV services.

The company also plans to trial its Vodafone Expand femtocell service over the network, which combines femtocell devices to expand indoor mobile coverage with a fixed-line residental broadband connection acting as backhaul.

Vodafone joins Telstra as the only two service providers offering services in NBN trial services for free since wholesaler NBN Co turned on commercial services in October this year.

 

Remember to expected for trials mid-next year, providing higher service level guarantees over residential services as well as committed bandwidth.

By 2013, the NBN plans to offer enterprise and point-to-point ethernet services boasting symmetric services up to 40 Mbps and a separate, peak speed capability of burst bandwidth.