NBN has furthered its push into the enterprise market, teaming up with Telstra, Vocus and TPG Telecom to conduct an industry trial on the design and construction of a new wholesale direct fibre product.

NBN's ‘Enterprise Ethernet' product is designed to deliver a wholesale high-bandwidth that can initially achieve symmetrical speeds of up to 1Gbps as well as increased service and activation support for large businesses and government customers.

Telstra, Vocus and TPG will work in collaboration with NBN's newly established business division over the coming months, with an aim to ensure the product provides a high quality and cost-effective service for enterprise customers.

NBN chief customer officer John Simon says, “Since establishing NBN Co's dedicated business division, we've made significant progress in bringing more choice to the market and implementing new product and service enhancements to meet the needs of medium, enterprise and government organisations.

“The NBN enterprise ethernet product is designed to meet international enterprise broadband standards and can provide large organisations with the ability to run data-intensive applications such as Virtual Private Networks (VPN), multiple voice lines and cloud-based solutions.

Simon says the three telcos that are involved with the project will initially be responsible for attaining business customers for trial participation.

“In the early stages of the trial, participating phone and internet providers will identify a number of business customers with varying construction and broadband requirements, where our focus will be on testing the infrastructure design and build,” he says.

“As we near closer to launch, we will begin to test the performance of the product as well as internal processes to ensure we are positioned to meet the growing needs of enterprises. The trial will give retailers the opportunity to provide feedback on the design and delivery of the product and ensure it is competitive and valuable option for their enterprise customers.

NBN says the new product offering will allow businesses to boost their competitive offerings and lower operating costs.

The government-owned infrastructure company says it now expects the enterprise ethernet product to be commercially available in the third quarter of 2018, accelerating the launch due to increased market demand.

The NBN access network is currently scheduled to be complete by 2020.