Vodafone Australia to switch on first nbn wholesale mobile site
- 03 February, 2017 11:37
Bill Morrow - CEO, nbn
nbn has signed the first agreement for its Cell Site Access Service (CSAS) product. The deal with Vodafone Hutchison Australia will see the company become the National Broadband builder's first Cell Site Access Service (CSAS) customer.
Under the terms of the deal, Vodafone Hutchison Australia will switch on new coverage in Molong, New South Wales, by using tower sharing and fibre services supplied by the nbn network.
The Molong area was previously identified as one of the areas needing improved mobile coverage in phase one of the Federal Government’s Mobile Blackspot Program, and this arrangement marks it as the first blackspot area to be addressed directly with the help of nbn infrastructure and products.
Vodafone said its network investment in Molong is expected to bring 155 square kilometres of additional mobile phone coverage to the region, including coverage for over 860 homes in the region, and areas along the Mitchell Highway.
The nbn CSAS product allows mobile operators to use the nbn network to expand their mobile coverage "quickly and cost effectively".
The deployment sees Vodafone Australia install an extra set of antennas on the Molong nbn fixed-wireless tower and use the nbn CSAS product to carry the mobile voice and data signals back to the nbn Point of Interconnection (PoI) in Dubbo.
nbn chief customer officer, John Simon, said the CSAS product creates "further community benefits" in regional Australia from the rollout of the NBN.
“This is genuinely exciting news for the community of Molong and for nbn. The good thing about this is not just that we are helping to deliver a new service for end-users but also that we offering customers new products to help them extend their portfolio and spread their networks," Simon said.
“The nbn CSAS product also offers additional potential for operators including other wireless applications such as deployment of Wi-Fi or small cell coverage. By offering this new product and making the most of our network and existing infrastructure, nbn is delivering new value to the community,” he said.
Vodafone CEO, Iñaki Berroeta, said it is part of the company’s continued network investment to support growing demand for advanced mobile devices and services in the region.
“We are competing vigorously to improve and expand our service in regional Australia... By working with government and participating in the Mobile Black Spots Program, we are seeking to expand access to mobile coverage for regional Australians to help deliver all of the economic and social benefits it enables.”
In addition, Vodafone plans to switch on another site in Cumnock under the Mobile Black Spot Program before the end of the first quarter of 2017. It’s expected to deliver an additional 333 square kilometres of coverage between Molong and Cumnock, as well as up to Cundumbul and up towards Garra and Amaroo.
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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.
