Nokia has won a contract from NBN to supply 5G fixed wireless access (FWA) mmWave Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) for NBN’s fixed wireless network upgrade.

The customer premise equipment (CPE) provided by Nokia supports mmWave bands, which are capable of Gigabit speeds for premises within a 7 km radius of a radio base station, the telecom equipment maker said.

NBN uses a mix of technologies. FWA  covers almost 650,000 premises across Australia. The upgrade program will extend the fixed wireless footprint by up to 50 percent, enabling approximately 120,000 former satellite-only eligible premises access to fixed wireless services for the first time.

The 5G mmWave upgrade utilizes the 28 GHz band to be operated in Non-Stand Alone (NSA) mode along with cmWave spectrum and will help enable faster speeds on the network, including the launch of two new wholesale high-speed tiers – 100 Mbps and 250 Mbps.

The CPE comprises an outdoor unit installed on the roof of the premise and an indoor unit providing user interfaces for the customer, connecting to the outdoor receiver with a 2.5Gbps Power over Ethernet connection.

The devices will be used as part of NBN’s Fixed Wireless and Satellite Upgrade Program, a $750 million investment in the NBN Fixed Wireless network, made up of $480 million from Australian Government supported by an additional $270 million from NBN.

“Using mmWave over long distances has been very challenging due to high signal attenuation. Nokia’s high gain Long Reach technology is an important innovation as it compensates for this attenuation, and minimises satellite interference, offering a balance of throughput and TCO,” said Shiv Putcha, Founder and Principal Analyst, Mandala Insights.

“Nokia’s 5G mmWave solution allows NBN to utilize both our sub6GHz and 5G mmWave spectrum allocations to vastly extend the range, speed and capacity of our existing fixed wireless network and improve the end user’s experience,” Jason Ashton, Executive General Manager, Fixed Wireless and Satellite at NBN said.