I saw this article on Whirlpool about Telstra granting a broadband co. a license to plant Fibre Optic lines in Telstra's underground pipes. Very, very interesting -

In a landmark development, Australian broadband telecommunications group NextGen Networks has won the right to run fibre optic cables through 700km of Telstra's underground pipes in all Australian capital cities and some regional areas.

The deal will also be a win for Telstra, giving the telco access to NextGen's vast infrastructure as well. NextGen claims to be one of the largest infrastructure projects in Australia, with an 8,400 kilometre fiber-optic broadband network being built to stretch from Brisbane to Perth. It will provide connectivity to 70 metropolitan and regional population centres, equivalent to approximately 90% of Australia's population.

The network will be geographically protected, with the Brisbane to Melbourne link utilising self-healing "SDH two-fibre ring" architecture, and it will be connected to both the Southern Cross Cable on the east coast of Australia and the SEA-ME-WE-3 cable on the west coast.

The next contender for Broadband? I sure hope so!

Update By Nathan: I made this a full news-item, as its quite interesting.

I read the story on Whirlpool and then mentioned that NextGen were partnering with Lucent. In other news apparently Lucent is in trouble and is laying off staff.

If this goes off it will be sweet!

That would be a pretty fault tolerant network too, both see-me-we and southern cross connectivity

one of those, light things, you know, at the end of a tunnel.

sounds pretty neat that a company is willing to do that.

here's hoping.

i hope that actually happens

Next Gen Networks - Tells you about them and some of their upcoming plans (Check out the bandwidth they are planning - minimum is 155mbit :) - Finally we may be able to get t1 lines! Check out their map for coverage too.

Those who are concerned about Lucent - I'm very sure they are just supplying the equipment - not running the business. I think this is what we've been waiting for peoples :)

Yahoo says that the Brisbane bit probably wont be up till October next year so we have a little while to wait :) - Just look out for next gen utes...

If they are only untilising 700km of Telstra pipe space, how exactly are they going to get the coverage they have planned ??

Thats probably a typo. Plus they may not be using all of Telstra's space - I think they mean in capital cities they will use it, because you can get a license to dig up ground and stick in cable if ya want.

Lucent will do the subcontracting in regards to the
laying of fiber.
Lucent is also a multinational company in such
the Australian branch (i used to work 4) is letting go
some of their staff, but lucent also hires ALOT of
staff from their overseas branches.
So they may be or have (after One.tel) but im sure the
parent company will have nothing to worry about.

Visionstream is undertaking all the construction work for the Nextgen network

Visionstream said, "Today we have started the deployment of the cable rollout for one of the largest infrastructure projects currently being undertaken in Australia"

Those two quotes from the Nextgen website make me think that Visionstream is laying the cables... They are laying down Lucent equipment though.

woohoo!

Actually, if they get it completed late in 2002 and hopefully have it available just after that'll be perfect timing. My Telstra contract will have just run out :)

I'd imagine they're utilising 700km of Telstras conduits where they can't dig up the ground but for places where they can (eg: the Nullabor) they'll just lay their own cable.

Where can't they dig ?? Because 700KM isn't very much, within cities you aren't just running a cable from one end to the other, you are running many cables through streets and s***, wouldn't take long to clock up 700KM

who cares, the more they lay down and the less we have to rely on telstra, the better :P

Actually silent, a T1 connection, while broadband, is just a fat collection of phone lines...T3 is actually fibre-optic, T1 is not. I don't know what Telstra actually have down at the moment in terms of broadband, whether it's fibre-optic or not, because we have different standards to the USA. T1 also only has a max bandwidth of 1.544 mbps, T3 has 44.446 or something like that...44.something. I'm actually hoping they give us T3 :).

The capacity of one Nextgen fibre is measured in Terabits of data per second. A Terabit is one million million (that's 1,000,000,000,000) bits of data. One fibre will be able to transfer the data from 200 CD-ROMs each second, with further capacity expansion in the future to match increasing demand.

mmmm yummmmy :)

Jarinor = Yeah I know but the fact of the matter is can you AFFORD a T3 - I just want a T1 for non wavering decent permanant speed at a decent price :)

But this has got me very excited :)

this all sounds good but u watch.. something will happen...... it aaaaallllways does. ( Telstra )

i cant wait for your 100MB web hosting allowance to be up skitza, that pic is getting to be too much:P

Do telstra actually enforce that ?? I use my webspace heaps and I have never been bared access to it...

same

also the fact is u will never get a T1 connection here.
Tx connections (incl T3 in some cases) is a collaberation of multiplexed 64kbit data streams over copper cable like phone lines.

E1 is the standers over here (2.044Mbit) and is fibre based technology.

the fact that they are starting at 155, then 644Mbit connections smells like ATM to me which provides uber fast and rock solid connectivity using things like priority stamping of packets sort of providing time-critical traffic (eg streaming media, games etc) to jump ahead of non-time-critical traffic (big ass file or webpage) at routers etc.

considering they are using Tbit bandwidth (something like GigaBytes per second) make me wonder if they have invested in photanic switching or DWDM technology which is complex to say the least. but if it's sucessfully implemented australia could supass USA in terms of bandwidth:users ratio.

interesting times ahead for broardband in australia.

LOL, only reason why Tel$tra would do that is if they had some sort of control over it somewhere. Then they'll do what they always do to ISP's that use tel$tra power, they will provide them with UTTERLY s*** service to the point of the new company having to Fold because of too many technical reasons that Tel$tra will insist are on their ( new isp ) end..

Theyve done it before and they'll do it again...

My university (griffith) uses ATM lines to connect the campus's. A single ATM router (cisco) is over 250,000 dorrah!! =P

Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet. I'm just about to reconnect to Optus, but I'm sure we'll be on that soon enough ;).

I just find it interesting that Telstra told optus "no, f*** off" and made them do all their cabling above ground, and oh, hang on, we've got 700km (or 7000, whatever it turns out to be) to spare. Let's sell it to another startup telco!

Anyway I'm not counting my chickens. Cable's just fine and dandy for the time being anyway (Optus cable that is). It'd be nice to have a faster connection but it would sure suck a lot more being on 56k again.

Awesome - My first unoffical news item :)

bahh f*** it Tel$tra are gunna lose out in the end anyway !

cause In Germany they are trailing new Technology for Internet/phone over the power lines. Aparently it is high bandwith/high speed goodness.

And since our Electricty company is still owned by Australia. It would be wise for Australia to invest in some of this goodness. Then we could sell the rest of the worthless Tel$tra to some stupid investor.

Toll Booth Willy me thinks that is good idea, sell tel$tra to sum dum f*** capitalist :)

Toll booth, I posted a thread about power line networking somewhere on the forums :).

The network will cover approximately 8,400 long haul route kilometres and can provide connectivity to approximately 70 major and regional population centres, equivalent to approximately 90% of Australia's population.

...YES but you may ask HOW MUCH ?

" STM 64 (10Gbps) Higher bandwidths are available on application. "

Muahahahaha MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHA

*cough* Sorry. So is this stuff actually going to be available to you and me? Or is it just to be resold to other providers or for business-only??

Yer, I can just imagine it, you got this big fat fibre optic into your house and you can only download 500Mb / Month, and anything over that gets a preimum wacked on it :P

This is not that big a deal...the 700 km they are talking about is inner city type cabling..where you cant dig up the concrete so you have to use existing channeling in the pits.

At present "hardly" any other carriers have the lincence to use telstra's runs, but rather lay their fibre in Energex's troughs. Guess why ??? Fibre is immune to EMF from the mains power cables,so this option is now open to them unlike the old days. And is exactly what most of the other carriers use including our provider at work and the provider of Ausgamers ( Comindico) who incidently are riding on Powertel's sweet arse network .

So NEXGEN getting the nod to use Telstras pits to lay their ring of fibre wont mean jack to us on BPA.

I think you can see where this will lead. At the end of the day they will still have to use Telstra copper at their tailends for the final step to us.

Can anyone say "Another ADSL type provider !"

bout bloody time we had sum more t3 lines in australia...

You of course meaning E Lines.....


;P

Nextgen Networks addresses the growing demand for wideband products and services in Australia. Nextgen's customer base will be new and incumbent carriers and other communication entities, including major Internet Service Providers (ISPs), Application Service Providers (ASPs), Storage Service Providers (SSPs), selected corporates and government agencies. These customers currently have a very limited choice of service providers capable of offering high capacity, reliable, secure and cost effective services between major population centres in Australia.


^lol, you undewrstand this?? it means that we cant buy it off em, we gotta get it through an isp with them or something, thats gunnu be prudy damn s***

Exactly what I was getting at above...they are simply a "reseller" of bandwidth...

More ISP's being able to provide high bandwidth services doesnt sound so bad to me...

Doesn't mean you definitely won't be able to buy from them. But you may have to buy on the same provisos that the large corporates do - ie: you end up paying a shedload.

so far ive managed to stay away from these forums, but after reading nat's update and then reading who the post was by, my only thought is GOOD GOD NO!

couldnt yew have just stolen the news and posted it yerself nats :( obviously this is going to go straight to silent remorses head and make him think ppl like him and stuff. before yew know it he'll be begging for news posting access, its all upon your head nats, YOUR HEAD

oh and this nextgen stuff sounds pretty allllight

258 - 117 = 141
top effort!

heh, i meant since anarots lame thread the other day

oops, another post, just nuke it when yer done reading it

you meant nuke anarot's post right?

done!

There was sure alot of nukes in there ;P

Well i see i might be able to get cable after all

but i swear if these c***s miss me street......
the s***s gonna hit the fan

but apart from that
155 mbit ? shizer id say that would cost a bit.....
/me is wondering what the hell you would use all that badwidth for.

anyway

1st post :)

i am expecting this big pipe is going to cost an arm and a leg (and a few fingers from your other hand)
Telstra currently have phat connections themselves, but you need be rolling in dollars to afford it...

When this new company comes in, they will see the prices of their competitors and match theirs to roughly the same - to ensure they can get the most profit