Recently I took a week off work and went hiking around the Hawkesbury river in NSW.
This did not mean I stopped thinking about telecom.
There’s a lot of beautiful bushland and some fancy houses nestled into the area, a good chunk of which are not accessible by road at all, with the only way to access them being by boat or a long hike along a bush track.
So how on earth do they have NBN FTTH connections?
The answer, is submarine cables.
No fancy erbium-doped fiber amplifiers here though, just regular GPON laid on the riverbed.
Telstra / Telecom had previously laid a copper 100 pair (seemingly just regular gel filled cable directly on the riverbed without any protection) to service the area, and then aerial distribution along the tracks connecting the homes.
NBNco it seems opted for a slightly safer approach and used Protectorshell articulated pipe to protect the cables in the water / on the beaches.
Once the cables land it’s back to regular NBN Aerial fiber runs, with DPUs on the power poles.
Apart from a few interesting catenary runs, and the fact there are no roads, once the fibre lands it’s very much a standard aerial NBN deployment.
There’s some great pics below from the supplier websites and local news site:
