NBN Co peddles it wares to KANZ Broadband Summit

The deployment of the National Broadband Network (NBN), in the coming decade will allow for greater technology opportunities, according to Cassandra Scott, a member of the NBN Co stakeholder relations team.

Speaking at the Korea-Australia-New Zealand (KANZ) Broadband Summit in Hobart, Tasmania, Scott ran over many of the fundamentals of NBN, emphasising its selling points from an NBN Co perspective.

Connections using interactive high-definition video, communications between all local premises and power utility, increasing carbon reduction opportunities with demand site energy management and connections between buyers and sellers of goods and services will be made possible, she said.

With the emergence of technologies demanding faster bandwidths, NBN aimed to put Australia in par with its international peers.

Scott said bandwidth requirements had grown more than 4000 times in the last 20 years. This underscored the importance of the NBN enabling peak speeds using a nationwide network of fibre, fixed wireless and satellite technologies.

“On the fibre product covering 93 per cent of Australian premises, NBN will initially offer speeds of up to 100Mbps, rising to 1Gbps in 2012 and with capacity for further upgrades in future," she said.

"It will engineer its wireless and long-term satellite solutions covering the remaining seven per cent premises to provide Australians with a peak speed of at least 12Mbps.

Local rural and regional areas will be provided with more broadband services and options, with the usage of three technologies on one access seeker interface.

This effectively eradicated the digital divide and lower barriers for entry for access seekers to offer broadband products in all geographical areas, SCott said.

Access and connectivity links will be sold to service providers.

The NBN rollout is designed to be staged and modular and can be used before the entire structure is complete.

“[It] will cost approximately $36 billion, employ around 15,000 people and take close to a decade to build the entire network reaching all Australians,” Scott said.