There are seven types of connection involved with the Australian nbn. The first is known as Fibre to the Premises or FTTP. This type of connection includes a fibre optic connection between the fibre distribution hub and your premise, and is considered the fastest connection type available. You may experience speeds on your MATE nbn plan at a little lower if your home was not installed with an FTTP type connection. The second type of connection type is known as Fibre to the Node or FTTN. This type of connection is a fibre optical cable which runs from the fibre distribution hub to a node in a residential street. The final connection between the street and your premises is a copper line, like your telephone cable. It’s still a super fast internet connection but speeds do vary between FTTP and FTTN connections. This is because copper line cables don’t quite have the bandwidth that fibre optic cables do so they conduct less energy – or, in this case, internet speed. A similar type of connection is Fibre to the Basement or FTTB and applies to apartment buildings. It consists of fibre cable running from the distribution hub to your apartment building’s basement and from there it’s conducted through the apartment’s existing telephone infrastructure. If the apartment building is a little old then you can probably expect the internal cables to be copper telephone cable. Newer buildings usually have Ethernet cables, though, which deliver speeds closer to those you can expect from FTTP connections. The final nbn connection that uses copper telephone lines is Fibre to the Curb or FTTC. This is like FTTN, but instead of a node the copper wiring starts at a telecommunications pit on the footpath in front of your house (also called a distribution point unit). Instead of hundreds or more metres, the copper cabling on an FTTC connection is often under 100 metres. As such, it’s much faster than FTTN. Hybrid Fibre Coaxial or HFC, is also known as cable internet. This type of connection uses fibre optic cable most of the way to your house, after which coaxial cable finishes the journey. This differs to FTTB, FTTN and FTTC because coaxial cabling is a shielded copper technology. As such, it can transfer data more quickly and over longer distances without signal degradation. HFC also usually has a much shorter distance between you and where the fibre cabling terminates when compared to FTTN. Finally, Fixed Wireless and Sky Muster satellite are wireless technologies used. Fixed Wireless is a technology that connects rural and regional areas to the nbn. Fixed Wireless uses ground-based base tower stations to provide a fixed wireless signal to your home. Fixed wireless essentially uses the same technology as the existing 4G mobile network in Australia from Telstra, Optus and Vodafone. Fixed Wireless cells are optimised for the number of users in each location and have dedicated fibre backhaul to the nearest point of interconnect (POI). Unlike Fixed Wireless, Sky Muster satellite on the other hand is another wireless service that delivers the nbn to homes and businesses in more remote areas of Australia, via two satellites.