Australia's NBN Co, the state-owned company rolling out the national broadband network, has abandoned plans to provide 100Mbps broadband plans for fixed wireless customers.
The move was announced by the company's CEO Bill Morrow during a Senate Estimates hearing last week, the ABCreported.
Morrow said developing the ability to provide constant 100Mbps speeds for the hundreds of thousands of customers within the NBN's fixed wireless footprint would cost “billions and billions” of dollars and be economically nonviable.
The NBN's fixed wireless footprint is expected to cover around 600,000 premises at the end of the rollout period in 2020, up from around 230,000 customers today. NBN Co has spent around $2 billion deploying nearly 2,000 mobile towers.
But despite this the NBN's fixed wireless network has been plagued with congestion issues, with speeds in some areas dropping below 3Mbps during peak periods, according to statistics provided by NBN Co.
NBN Co has been directed to provide speeds of at least 50Mbps to the majority of the country and 25Mbps nationwide.
One solution could come in the form of 5G. Morrow said the company is trialing 5G ahead of the commercial launch of the technology.