A lot owner from NSW is wondering who pays for the fibre optic upgrade to individual units. Leanne Habib, Premium Strata provides the following response.
Question: Where will the financial responsibility lie for the fibre optic upgrade to individual units, assuming a majority of the owners corporation want direct fibre to their home?
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Many owners in our strata are enthusiastically anticipating the arrival of the NBN this financial year, and their individual opportunity to update their communications infrastructure.
We are led to believe that NBN Co will be providing Fibre to the Building (FTTB) to service our 10 townhouses. However, NBN Co has yet to confirm FTTB, leaving the less desirable Fibre to the Curb (FTTC) as a possibility.
Regardless of what NBN delivers the final connection to each townhouse will be via our existing copper phone lines. The copper runs exclusively through common property.
Our Strata Committee is keen to upgrade all copper phone lines so that all residents can take full advantage of the NBN’s increased data capacity, plus enjoy their increased property value when equipped with high-speed internet access.
Our question is, where will financial responsibility lie for the fibre optic upgrade to individual units, (assuming a majority of the owners corporation want direct fibre to their home)?
Answer: When it comes to the fibre optic upgrade, there is no hard and fast rule.
There is no hard and fast rule, however, before considering costing, your building will need to consent to the NBN. Then, your building will decide how it will be financed.
Clearly, economies of scale dictate that the individual access will be cheaper if organised and paid for by the Owners Corporation. Problems could arise where individual lots do not wish to subscribe to the NBN.
You and/or your building will need legal advice to implement the NBN and create relevant by-laws.
This post appears in Strata News #202.
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- NBN installed without authorisation from strata scheme
Leanne Habib
Premium Strata
P: 02 9281 6440
E: info@premiumstrata.com.au
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This article is not intended to be personal advice and you should not rely on it as a substitute for any form of advice.
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FTTC would actually be better than FTTB, as their exists an upgrade path for FTTP, and has lower operating costs for nbn.
FTTN is much less desirable, and is the most problematic of the three.
With FTTN, you are unlikely to achieve 100Mbps. It has the highest fault rate. The node may be anywhere up to 1.8km from your site. There is no upgrade. (Your iPhone upgrade re-uses more components)
All three of these use the copper in the strata, owned usually by the BC (usually). This wiring was never installed for high speed data, so it frequently requires changes, such as the removal of second phone points, ADSL filters, Alarms.
FTTB is FTTN with the fibre into your site’s MFD. FTTC uses a different technology to send the information on the fibre to a 4 port splitter, where it uses VDSL like the other two technologies.
FTTN<FTTB<FTTC<<<<FTTP
FTTP would require fibre cabling in the strata, not always paid for by nbn.
::Trying not to stray into politics. In this case I think Leanne used term from England where they call FTTN, FTTC. Here FTTC is sometimes called FTTDp (Kerb?) is a slightly better technology.
FTTB uses a 48 port device to provide broadband. Using this would be a very expensive way to deliver broadband (far in excess of FTTP)
FTTC uses a 4 port device and a corresponding modem to supply power.
Both require fibre to the MFD.
FTTN is served from down the street, and has a much lower serviceability (speed, reliability)
Direct fibre is not an option under nbn, but FTTP where user pays for install (and quote) is. The cost of the install within the strata is likely to be insignifciant compared with the nbn cost. (10K to 1M) and can only be done after they have installed the FTTN/B/C
With FTTC, it is just the strata cabling that should need to be done to upgrade to FTTP, but there are currently no plans to offer this.
Why is FTTC more undesirable in comparison to FTTB?
Perhaps it would have been preferable to refer this very reasonable question to someone who knew the answer? It is a matter I suspect many of us are keen to understand better
Hi Peter
We have received the following response from Leanne Habib, Premium Strata:
It is not a question of “knowing the answer”. It is a question of what your building as an owners corporation elects to do and resolves in general meeting of the owners corporation, hence the response, “there is no hard and fast rule”.
Your building will need to consider a building cabling plan and consult with the relevant experts including lawyers to prepare a by-law in relation thereto. Further, have you received a proposal? You will need a lawyer to review the proposed licences and/or any incentives. Further, the upgrades/enhancement will require special resolution of the owners corporation, which should be drafted by a lawyer. Ongoing maintenance of installations will also need to be determined via a by-law.
Financing is something that the owners corporation can determine eg fund all installations to all individual units, fund infrastructure only, this will also determine the way forward as a by law may not be necessary if the owners corporation carry out the works.