The Australian National Broadband Network Company has flagged a successful technical trial of multiple generations of optical technologies over its present-day Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) network, demonstrating that its full fibre infrastructure is capable of supporting growing household and business data demands for decades to come.

The lab technical trial, with partner Nokia, showcased multiple optical technologies which when used simultaneously, allowed NBN Co to achieve more than 230 Gigabits per second capacity, utilising full fibre in the lab – with the potential to increase to Terabit rates in similar technical trials in future.

The Supercharging Fibre trial took place at the Broadband Forum’s Spring Member Meeting, which is being held in Australia for the first time and is being hosted by NBN Co.

NBN Co said it successfully demonstrated the use of coherent optics with FTTP access technologies GPON, XGSPON and 50GPON, running at the same time over the same access physical full fibre infrastructure that the company delivers to Australian homes and businesses today.

Coherent optics are a type of advanced communications technology typically found within core and data centre networks, with vast reach, low latency and massive capacity required to meet ever growing demand

“Our Supercharging Fibre technical trial further demonstrates our full fibre technology is future-ready, especially as FTTP is now the dominant technology on nbn’s fixed line network,” said NBN Co CTO Guy Scott.

“I’m proud that our existing full fibre infrastructure was able to support multiple generations of technologies, with world first results achieved.

“More importantly the trial has successfully demonstrated the capabilities of nbn’s world-class FTTP infrastructure and its potential to support ultra-fast speeds for households and business customers in the future.

“Homes and businesses across Australia are demanding more data than ever before, and this will only continue to accelerate in coming decades as we see increased adoption and applications of emerging technologies.

“Access to high-speed broadband is a critical enabler of productivity, innovation and economic growth and full fibre technology enables that with unmatched reliability, speed and scalability in the nbn residential space.” he said.

NBN Co said that more than 1 million customers had upgraded from legacy nbn copper to faster and more resilient full fibre, cementing it as nbn’s dominant technology at around 35 per cent of nbn’s network connections.

NBN Co is also seeing customer demands for more data.

As at 31 December 2025, average monthly data download was 557 gigabytes per active service across connected premises, up 13 per cent year-on-year, with FTTP services averaging 668 gigabytes, up 14 per cent year-on-year as customers embraced higher speeds.