Telstra goes 100Mbps on cable; trials set top box

Stephen Withers
Thursday, 19 November 2009 08:47

Your IT - Home IT

Almost one million Melbourne homes are covered by Telstra's HFC network, which has now been upgraded to the DOCSIS 3.0 standard. The upgrade cost less than the original estimate of $A300 million.

Completion of the upgrade was "a historic day for Melbourne," said Kramer,

"The Melbourne home will be a happier place when it's connected to our cable service," she added.

Telstra officials were unable to tell iTWire whether subscribers would be allowed to connect servers to the 100Mbps service, which has a uplink speed of 2Mbps (similar to the fastest ADSL connections). One technical obstacle is that fixed IP addresses aren't offered to cable subscribers, so it would be necessary to use a dynamic DNS service such as DynDNS or No-IP.

Telstra's Velocity FTTH network has also been upgraded to a download capacity of up to 100Mbps.

Rocca said the previously announced upgrade to 30Mbps would continue over the next 12 months. He explained that the Melbourne broadband market was particularly competitive, and that Telstra's core engineering team is located in Melbourne, making it a good location for the initial rollout of 100Mbps.

"We share the government's vision [for the NBN]," he said.

What about the Telstra set-top box? Please read on.