Federal Labor will go the next election with a National Broadband Network commitment to expand optional full-fibre upgrades to an additional 1.5 million homes by 2025.
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NBN Co would also remain in public hands under a Labor government, Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese and shadow communications spokeswoman Michelle Rowland will announce on Wednesday.
Australia now ranks 53rd in the world for fixed-line broadband speeds a year after the NBN was declared functionally complete, due to relatively few homes with access to gigabyte speeds.
"Reliable, quality, high-speed internet is not a luxury or a nice-to-have. It is essential 21st century infrastructure," the Labor leader will say.
Under Labor's plan, close to 90 per cent of the remaining lower-speed fibre-to-the-node connections in Australian homes and businesses could be eliminated 12 years after they were introduced by the Coalition government to lower costs of the network's rollout.
Labor did not go the last election with a large-scale overhaul of the NBN closer to its original vision, saying it had to accept entrenched "realities" of the existing network under changes made by the Coalition.
But the Coalition government itself has begun dismantling its multi-technology mix version of the NBN in favour of full fibre, with a $3.5 billion upgrade program to replace the fibre to the node technology.
Despite announcing it was functionally complete last year, NBN Co began announcing suburbs where homes would be eligible for an upgrade from fibre-to-the-node to new full-fibre connections capable of wholesale download speeds of close to 1Gbps on demand.
NBN Co expected to upgrade 2 million premises across the nation by 2023, with 1.6 million currently included its roadmap.
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ACT suburbs currently scheduled for upgrading by 2023 are Banks, Campbell, Conder, Dickson, Gordon, Hume, Lyneham, O'Connor, Reid and Turner.
Suburbs such as Kambah, Wanniassa, Kaleen, Narrabundah, Dunlop, Ainslie and Holt have not yet been earmarked for upgrades by NBN Co, but would be under Labor's plan.
About 120,000 Canberra homes would get the choice to upgrade to full fibre if they opt into the higher speed plan from their broadband retail provider.
A little over half of the ACT network was originally built as fibre to the node, in which old copper wiring technology limits internet speed to a maximum between 50Mbps to 100Mbps.
Labor's $2.4 billion full-fibre expansion pledge is in addition to the existing roadmap, and is expected to create 12,000 jobs.
About 660,000 additional homes and businesses in regional communities would have access to upgrades.
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Harley Dennett
Former federal politics bureau chief for the Canberra Times, via a career that's taken me from rural Victoria to Washington DC. Telling the stories of my local LGBTI community brought me to political journalism, where I've covered eight budgets, four national elections in two countries, Defence, public service and international governance.
Former federal politics bureau chief for the Canberra Times, via a career that's taken me from rural Victoria to Washington DC. Telling the stories of my local LGBTI community brought me to political journalism, where I've covered eight budgets, four national elections in two countries, Defence, public service and international governance.
