NBN Co will start selling a one gigabit per second (1Gbps) broadband service before the end of the year, but availability will depend on the number of people willing to pay for the super fast speeds.

The commercial-grade broadband service will travel at download speeds of up to 1000 megabits per second [Mbps], also known as a gigabit, and upload speeds of 400 Mbps. This was about 100 times faster than the average speeds available to most households on the copper network today.

NBN Co will start selling a 1 Gbps broadband service before the end of the year. Credit:Fairfax Media

An NBN Co spokesman confirmed on Friday the service "will be made available to retail service providers by the end of the year", but that it was up to retail service providers to decide whether they would sell it to customers.

There were currently about 250,000 households and businesses within NBN Co’s fibre footprint that could potentially request the service.