Since last Monday, 45,000 more homes can now get fast broadband after being added to the NBN footprint. To put that in context, this is roughly the equivalent of adding all of the households of Albury and Wagga in one week.

This will mean families can stream videos when they want, and everyone in the household can be on their iPads or computers at the same time. It means businesses can build a bigger customer base, with a reliable service securing sales orders locally and from around the globe. There are now hundreds of thousands of examples of connected homes and companies right across regional and urban Australia.

The 45,000 homes added in a week is a far cry from the average of 7000 homes a week two years ago, and illustrates the growing pace of the rollout.

This year will be a tipping point for the benefits of connectivity in Australia. Right now nearly 1.8 million homes can already order a service. By the end of June 2017, that number will triple to cover nearly half of Australia. This is off the back of doubling the footprint over the course of 2015.