Last November, NBN announced the immediately half of the hybrid fibre coaxial rollout, due to mounting issues and service dropouts. NBN put a six to nine month timeframe on when it would begin rolling out the technology again, so an April return is not unexpected.

NBN declined to comment.

At the launch of FTTC on Sunday, Communications Minister Mitch Fifield hailed the cheaper technology, which is able to deliver super-fast broadband.

"Fibre-to-the-curb is the latest technology to be used in the NBN rollout, and over the next few years one million premises around the country will be connected to high-speed broadband using FTTC," he said.

"FTTC can deliver the same 100Mbps speeds as fibre to the premise technology but at lower cost, in much less time and with far less disruption to people's property."

The growing FTTC rollout and the super-fast expected speeds on FTTP raise questions about the divide between those technologies and the much criticised FTTN rollout.

NBN had previous earmarked the first FTTC in place of the old Optus HFC network. NBN and Optus had been in discussions for the upgrade of the existing HFC network but the cost of that was thought to be higher than simply rolling out FTTC. NBN signed an $800 million deal with Optus in 2011 for the decommissioning of the telco's cable TV and internet network.

Separately, last week, NBN chief executive Bill Morrow announced he would be departing the government-owned business at the end of 2018.

Mr Morrow, who became chief executive of NBN in 2014 after coming to Australia for a stint as Vodafone Hutchison Australia boss between 2012 and 2014, told NBN's board and the government he will leave at the end of 2018.

The four years as chief executive of NBN is the longest Mr Morrow has stayed in a single role in his executive career. He spent 11 years at Vodafone between 1995 and 2006 in various chief executive and senior executive roles across the United Kingdom, Japan and Belgium.

A global search will be conducted to find a replacement.