Unless pay TV cables already run down the street, homes in HFC-enabled suburbs are likely to end up on fibre-to-the-node as up to 1.5 million premises are slashed from the cable rollout plan.

Australian homes within the HFC footprint, but not already connected to the cable network, have been in no man's land ever since the decision to switch from a nationwide fibre-to-the-premises rollout to the Multi-Technology Mix model. Now the nation's hotch potch broadband rollout plans to dump many of them on fibre to the node in order to cut costs.

NBN chief Bill Morrow flagged HFC changes in March, following Malcolm Turnbull's order to rollout the NBN "the fastest, most economical way". Credit:Adam Hollingworth

After originally expecting to get fibre to their door like the rest of the country, homes in the HFC footprint were told they'd be connected to the cable networks – which would undergo an overhaul to support more homes and faster speeds of up to 1 Gbps thanks to the DOCSIS3.1 upgrade. Now many homes within HFC-enabled suburbs will end up on slower fibre-to-the-node which uses the existing copper phone lines to cover the last few hundred meters to reach homes.

The NBN planned to connect 4 million homes to the HFC cable networks it acquired from Telstra and Optus, but cost blowouts have forced the NBN to slash this to between 2.5 million and 3.2 million homes. The cost to connect premises to the HFC network has blown out from $1800 to $2300 per home, according to the NBN's Corporate Plan 2017.