Remote and regional Australia has taken a step closer to receiving fast broadband with the completion of NBN’s ninth satellite ground station at Waroona in Western Australia.
When completed, NBN’s network of satellite ground stations will feature 24 satellite dishes across 10 sites. They will be critical pieces of infrastructure, essential to the delivery of NBN’s Long Term Satellite Service, due to launch in early 2016, or sooner if possible.
Situated in some of Australia’s most iconic and picturesque locations the sites were selected to best enable the NBN to deliver a world class, fast broadband service to remote and regional Australia.
Locations
| NSW | Bourke, Wolumla, Broken Hill |
| WA | Carnarvon, Geraldton, Kalgoorlie, Waroona |
| QLD | Roma |
| TAS | Geeveston |
| SA | Ceduna (due in Q1, 2015) |
- Each ground station features two, 13.5 metre satellite dishes.
- Wolumla and Kalgoorlie have an extra two dishes each for back-up, telemetry and tracking.
- The majority of stations have on-ground solar farms, designed to offset the power consumption of the facilities.
NBN Program Director Satellite, Matt Dawson, spoke to the recent construction:
“Once in service, NBN’s Long Term Satellite will help people in remote and regional Australia access e-health, distance education, and entertainment on demand, whilst businesses could potentially increase productivity, reduce costs, and access new markets.”
“When fully operational, each NBN Satellite Ground Station will be capable of transmitting 10 GBs per second – which is equivalent to downloading one HD movie every second,” he said.
The completion of the stations follows the launch of NBN’s Satellite Subsidy Scheme and the addition of extra capacity to the Interim Satellite Solution – both designed to provide broadband access to remote and regional Australia until the launch of NBN’s Long Term Satellite Service.
