Damian Ivereigh, chief executive of the Launceston-based Launtel, told iTWire in response to queries that he was looking forward to having the technology turned on.
"We would also like to see how the service performs in the real world with multiple services, given that HFC is by it's nature a shared infrastructure," he added.
Earlier this month, the NBN Co said it had achieved trial download speeds of 994Mbps on the HFC network, using next-generation DOCSIS 3.1 technology.
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The rollout of the national broadband network is due to be completed next year, with fibre to the home (brownfields and greenfields) going to 1.9 million premises, fibre to the node supplying 4.7 million, fibre to the curb 1.4 million, fixed wireless 600,000 and satellite 400,000.
Said Ivereigh: "One of the biggest issues with providing services faster than 100Mbps is the scaling problem due to the CVC pricing construct. Because right now only FttP can get speeds higher than 100Mbps, it means that you have to provision a lot of expensive CVC to support relatively few services."
In Australia, the AVC charge for a 100Mbps connection is $38 while the CVC is $15.25 per Mbps (1.4Mbps required). For a gigabit connection, the AVC is $150, while the CVC is $15.25 per Mbps, with 2.5 to 3Mbps required.
Costs such as backhaul, operations, sales and marketing and telephony costs are excluded from these amounts.
"By adding HFC to the list of tech that can do more than 100Mbps it will increase the opportunities for RSPs to sell these higher speeds at an economically attractive price," Ivereigh said. "We are also looking forward to NBN Co adding FttC to this list.
"We are currently giving feedback to NBN Co as part of their pricing review about the whole CVC construct and in particular how it could be amended to allow services faster than 100Mbps to be sold."
