In providing a better broadband service for its inner city customers which will also allow it to compete head-to-head with the NBN for profitable household customers, Optus has just reached completion on a $25 million upgrade to make its hybrid fibre-coaxial (HFC) cable network 4x faster, resulting in a speed of up to 75Mbit/sec, versus the NBN's 100Mbit/sec fibre line that's being rolled out over an eight year period.

Optus is allowing its 430,000 customers on its cable network in the surburban areas surrounding Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane to get the much faster speeds now available to them for an additional $15 per month, though this will also require the cost of a new modem that can take advantage of the extra bandwidth on tap.