Bill Morrow - CEO, nbn
The deal with Vodafone Australia comes as nbn CEO, Bill Morrow, reiterates the extent of the project and the costs involved.
“We will be the only continent to have a fast broadband high-consumption network built out to every home and every business. Collectively, as an industry, we’re going to be in a far superior position to any other country comparable to Australia,” Morrow told ABC Radio on 3 February.
“We’re already seeing 150 gigabytes per user, per month, run over the network. That’s faster than anything else within the country. That is more than what most other countries are observing today and we have a lot of bandwidth to be able to take it much further than that.”
Meanwhile, Vodafone competitor, Telstra, recently launched its new Nighthawk M1 mobile broadband technology, which was developed in partnership with Qualcomm, Netgear, and Ericsson.
The new offering promises gigabit speeds over LTE mobile networks, up to 10 times faster than nbn's current top-tier 100 Mbps product option.
“It will be a boon for our business customers who demand office-like bandwidth on the go to power increasingly mobile workforces and sophisticated cloud-based applications,” Telstra device management director, Andrew Volard, said.
“A decade ago, gigabit-class speeds on mobile networks could scarcely be imagined… [This] is going to help people further embrace a new breed of mobile applications and experiences, including immersive virtual reality, connected cloud computing, and rich entertainment. And it brings us one step closer to introducing 5G in Australia,” he added.
Optus has also taken efforts to ramp up its regional mobile coverage, installing additional satellite small cells across five different locations in the Northern Territory and six locations in South Australia.
The new deal between Vodafone and nbn to provide connectivity for additional coverage in a mobile blackspot area comes after an audit report released in October last year revealed problems with the way the Department of Communications and the Arts allocated funding for the programme's first round of mobile base stations.
According to the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO), the first phase of the Mobile Black Spot Programme fell victim to “weaknesses” in how its funding was allocated.
In the report, the ANAO said that 89 of the 499 selected base stations allocated funding provided minimal new coverage of additional premises and transport routes. These 89 base stations came at a combined cost of $28 million, but no breakout of the specific base stations were identified.
Join the CIO Australia group on LinkedIn. The group is open to CIOs, IT Directors, COOs, CTOs and senior IT managers.