Fibre to the Premises vs Fibre to the Curb: What Actually Changes for a Business Connection
Byteway sets up and manages Business NBN connections for companies across Australia, and one question comes up constantly from businesses on Fibre to the Curb: is it worth moving to full fibre, and what actually changes if we do? The short version is that the two are closer on paper than in practice, and the gap has widened over the past year. Here is what genuinely changes for a business connection, in plain terms. Both are called fibre, and both are good compared with the old Fibre to the Node. But they are not the same connection, and for a business the differences show up in the places that matter: top speed, upload capacity, reliability, and what you can do next. Fibre to the Curb (FTTC) runs fibre to a small unit in a pit near your premises, then uses a short run of existing copper for the final stretch inside. Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) runs fibre the whole way in, with no copper at all. The practical result: FTTC is capped at the NBN 100 speed tier, while FTTP reaches NBN 500, 1000 and 2000. FTTP is also more reliable, with lower fault rates, and it is the only one of the two that supports higher-grade business fibre products. For most growing businesses, FTTP is the connection worth being on. What is the difference between FTTP and FTTC? The difference is where the fibre stops and copper takes over. Fibre to the Curb (FTTC) brings the fibre to a small distribution unit, usually in a pit or under a pit lid on the street near your premises, often described as “the curb”. From there, the existing copper line carries the signal the last short distance into your building. So FTTC is mostly fibre with a copper final run. Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) brings the fibre all the way into your building, terminating at an NBN connection box installed inside. There is no copper in the path at all. That final copper segment in FTTC is short, which is why FTTC performs far better than the old node-based connections where copper ran much further. But “short copper” is still copper, and copper is the part that limits speed, degrades over time, and fails more often. The speed gap is now much bigger than it used to be This is the change most businesses have not caught up with, and it is the most important part of the comparison in 2026. For years, FTTC and FTTP felt similar because both comfortably delivered the common NBN 100 plans. That is no longer the whole picture. In late 2025, NBN Co significantly boosted its higher speed tiers, and it rolled those boosts out across FTTP and HFC connections only. The faster tiers, NBN 500, 750, 1000 and the newest NBN 2000, are available on FTTP. They are not available on FTTC. FTTC is capped at NBN 100. That is the ceiling, and it cannot go higher without upgrading the connection to FTTP. So the gap is no longer “both are fine, one is slightly better”. It is: FTTC FTTP Maximum speed tier NBN 100 Up to NBN 2000 Faster tiers (500/1000/2000) Not available Available Final connection Short copper run Fibre all the way Upload capacity Limited by copper segment Far higher, supports higher-grade products Reliability Higher fault rate Lower fault rate Future headroom None, this is the ceiling Substantial For a business that is comfortable on 100 megabits today, this might sound academic. It is not, for one reason: businesses grow into their connection. More staff, more cloud applications, more video, more data moving to and from the cloud. On FTTC you have no room to move up. On FTTP you can lift your speed with a plan change and no infrastructure work. Why reliability matters more for a business than a household? Speed gets the headlines. For a business, reliability often matters more, and this is another area where the two differ. NBN Co has publicly stated that FTTC has higher fault rates than both FTTN and FTTP, and it is prioritising the retirement of FTTC partly for that reason, along with long-term uncertainty in the supply of FTTC equipment. In other words, the network operator itself treats FTTC as the less reliable, less future-proof technology. That copper final segment is the weak point. It is susceptible to moisture, corrosion and degradation in a way fibre is not. After extreme weather, fibre services generally recover faster than copper-dependent ones. For a household, an occasional outage is an annoyance. For a business, it is EFTPOS down, phones down if you run voice over the connection, staff unable to reach cloud systems, and customers turned away. The cost of unreliability is measured differently when it is your trading day. What FTTP unlocks that FTTC cannot? Moving to full fibre is not only about a bigger number on your plan. It changes what your connection can support. Higher and symmetrical-capable speeds. FTTP supports the full range of speed tiers, and the higher upload capacity matters for any business that pushes data out: cloud backups, large file transfers, video, hosting, remote access. FTTC’s copper segment constrains upload in a way FTTP does not. Higher-grade business products. The step up from standard Business NBN to premium business-grade fibre products, the kind that come with stronger service levels, generally requires fibre to the premises. FTTC is not the platform for that. If you ever want a connection with a service level agreement and guaranteed restoration times, FTTP is the starting point, and dedicated fibre is the tier beyond it. Room for voice and multiple services. Running your phone system over the internet, and running it reliably alongside everything else, is easier on a connection with more headroom and no copper bottleneck. Future headroom without more building work. Once fibre is in, moving up a speed tier is a plan change, not a construction job. On FTTC, the next real step up is the FTTP upgrade









