NBN Relocations — Customer-Side Cabling

What can and can't be moved on the customer side

Your NBN connection has two halves. Everything from the street to the network termination device is carrier infrastructure owned by NBN Co or your provider. Everything past that — internal leads, wall outlets, data points, the modem and your home or office network — is customer cabling. CoreComms works on the customer side, and that is where most relocation frustration actually lives.

In practice, relocating the modem to a better position rarely requires touching carrier equipment at all. We run a new internal Cat6 lead from the existing entry point or first socket to the new room, terminate it neatly at a wall plate, reconnect the modem and test the link. If a proposed relocation does require NBN-owned equipment to be moved, we tell you upfront so you can raise it with your provider rather than paying for a visit that cannot proceed.

Why modem placement changes your Wi-Fi more than a new router

Most Australian homes have the NBN box in a garage, laundry or the front bedroom, simply because that is where the lead-in arrived. Wi-Fi radiates outwards from the router, so putting it in the corner of a property throws half its coverage into the driveway. Moving the equipment to a central hallway or living area typically improves coverage across the whole home more than upgrading to a more expensive router does.

Brick, rendered block, foil-backed insulation, tiled wet areas and concrete floors between storeys all attenuate wireless signal. That is why we look at the floor plan before recommending a position, and why a relocation is often paired with a wired access point or two rather than a mesh node that has to burn wireless capacity talking back to the router.

• Central placement beats corner placement for whole-property coverage
• Wired backhaul beats wireless mesh whenever a cable can be run
• Double-storey homes usually need a second wired access point upstairs
• Keep the modem off the floor, out of cupboards and away from metal cabinets

Relocations during renovations and moves

The cheapest time to relocate anything is while walls are open. If you are renovating, converting a garage or adding a second storey, getting cabling roughed in before the plasterboard goes back on saves a substantial amount of labour later. We can work alongside your builder or electrician and leave draw strings for future runs.

For people moving into an existing home, a relocation is often bundled with a quick health check of the existing internal cabling — old telephone-era cable, unterminated leads left in ceilings and DIY joins are all common in older SEQ housing stock and all cause dropouts that get wrongly blamed on the provider.