In an interview published today at TelecomTV, Australian Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Stephen Conroy discusses Australia’s national strategy for broadband. The bidding process for the Australian NGN is completing at the end of this year. Watch the interview at the end of the post. Here’s the interview’s highlights:
- The project aims covering 98% of Australian homes
- Connection speeds are required to be 12Mbps minimum
- The Government’s contribution in this project will be $4.6billions
- The network will be based on FTTN architecture with copper covering the distance from the intermediate node to the end customer
- The project’s time frame is 5 years
Covering 98% of Australia is certainly an ambitious task; however, speed requirements of 12Mbps 5 years from may fall short for Australian, especially if the rest of the world keeps the pace in the broadband race.
Side note: Two are the main contenders for this project. Telstra (the Australian incumbent) and Terria, (a Telco consortium comprised of Telstra’s major competitors).
