6,000km Regional Broadband For NBN

Federal Comms Minister Stephen Conroy says it will cost $250 million for the regional rollout of NBN

The Rudd Government today announced 6,000km of regional fibre broadband backbone links, the first building blocks of the National Broadband Network on mainland Australia.
“This priority $250 million investment will directly benefit more than 395,000 people in 100 regional locations and create new jobs across five states and the Northern Territory,” said the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Stephen Conroy.

“These regional backbones are the first building blocks of the National Broadband Network on the mainland and will stimulate competition and better broadband services across regional Australia.”

“This is just the beginning and the National Broadband Network will ensure high-speed broadband is also expanded to all homes, schools and workplaces across Australia.”

Senator Conroy today signed an agreement with Leighton Holdings owned Nextgen Networks to construct the new broadband backbone infrastructure under the $250 million Regional Backbone Blackspots Program. Nextgen was selected through a competitive tender process.

Nextgen will build backbone transmission links and provide more than 100 access points en-route to six priority blackspot locations:

• Geraldton, Western Australia.

• Darwin, Northern Territory.

• Emerald and Longreach, Queensland.

• Broken Hill, New South Wales.

• Victor Harbor, South Australia.

• South West Gippsland, Victoria.

These priority locations were chosen following a public consultation process to identify competition and capacity shortfalls.