Published on the 31/05/2017 | Written by Newsdesk
Launceston becomes Australia’s first Gigabit city…
The Island of Inspiration has another drawcard as Tasmania’s second biggest city has become Australia’s first ‘Gigabit’ city. That’s thanks to local telco Launtel which as of today is offering the local business community 100 per cent fibre-to-the-premise (FttP) connectivity ‘that will enable Gigabit speeds at commercially viable rates’.
In a statement, Launtel director Damian Ivereigh said Australian business has been held back by internet speeds that are still playing catch-up. “The Akamai State of the Internet report ranks Australia 67th for fixed line internet speeds, behind countries such as Kenya and Latvia. Only 76 per cent of Australians have speeds above 4mb/s – we’ll be delivering 1,000mb/s.”
Speeds that now match those of the world’s fastest internet countries, such as Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan (and New Zealand, where fibre to the home is accessible to members of the public) means ‘Launceston businesses can expand by trading with the world’. “Fast communications will facilitate business with any of the developed countries, without having to leave home. For instance, Gigabit speeds will allow a local business to control robots overseas through virtual reality,” said Iverreigh.
He expressed confidence that Gigabit Launceston can attract more companies and employment to Tasmania and cited US city Chattanooga as an example where a gigabit economy has led to wage growth in line with capital city levels and young people returning to the city as more companies roll into town.
New Zealand’s Dunedin was the first town in that country to be named a ‘Gigatown’ – that was back in 2014, with the connections going live during 2015. However, the benefits of that exercise are not clear; indeed, New Zealand has shown that many internet subscribers who can access fibre, simply don’t. While households aren’t the same thing as businesses, just under 40 percent of Kiwis who have fibre right outside their homes, actually sign up for it.
In any event, Launtel said it will provide Gigabit connections to any business with a pure fibre NBN connection, which is 10x faster than the former maximum and 100x faster than the national average. Launtel’s low contention ratios enable a file to be downloaded faster from the cloud than from a USB stick.
“We are providing a service that is so fast that internet speed is no longer a limiting factor in business productivity,” said Ivereigh. “It removes the disadvantages of distance for Tasmania and puts us in the box seat to grab all opportunities.”
Launceston and Hobart were Australia’s first cities Australia to be ‘turned on’ to the original NBN ‘pure fibre’ network of FttP, which recently hit a hard-fought milestone of 5 million connections.
Political decisions saw the rollout change for parts of Tasmania and almost all the Australian mainland to be fibre-to-the-node (FttN), which connects to a node in a local neighbourhood then uses copper lines to take data into the premises. This last mile effectively hobbles the fibre, reducing its theoretical peak throughput to that offered by obsolete technology.
