With the current debate over where the country is heading in terms of the roll out of high-speed residential broadband, one Western Australian company has decided to leap ahead of the pack.
With the current debate over where the country is heading in terms of the roll out of high-speed residential broadband, one Western Australian company has decided to leap ahead of the pack.
While broadband providers are focused on rolling out the likes of ADSL through Telstra’s copper cable network, Malaga-based Broadcast Engineering Services is offering ultra high-speed broadband frequencies through the roll out of fibre-to-the-home within a number of Perth’s greenfield estates, with many of the Western Australia’s developers eager to employ their services.
Broadcast Engineering Services general manager, Geoff Aldridge, told WA Business News that Western Australian developers had been leaders in offering high-speed broadband to the new estates.
“The development community over here really saw the need to work with companies like us to put [fibre-to-the-home] in for their residents,” he said.
“There is not much happening in the eastern states where developers are doing this.”
Mr Aldridge said developers such as Satterly Property Group and Urban Pacific Ltd saw broadband connectivity as a marketing tool for potential residents in greenfield estates.
“We started deploying fibre-to-the-home in Clarkson’s Somerly Estate [developed by Urban Pacific] and that was launched in September 2005,” he said.
“We have now brought on line Satterly’s Brighton Estate with fibre-to-the-home and the Vale Estate with Multiplex. We have done the first 4,000 lots in Ellenbrook with HFC coaxial TV network and we are looking to go fibre-to-the-home with the remaining lots.”
The company has recently won contracts including the Capricorn project in Yanchep which will require putting in the fibre-to-the-home service to up to 6,000 homes, with a focus on extending their reach to Bunbury and Busselton over the next 12 months.
Broadcast Engineering Services currently has its own ISP division called e-wire, which offers services from free-to-air TV reticulation through to high-speed broadband internet.
“We are looking at signing up another ISP to offer wholesale access into our ‘last mile’ as well,” Mr Aldridge said.
“We want to open our networks up to wholesale options to provide that service to the home owner and not try to restrict the home owner from services whether its pay TV, video on demand content etc.”
The company first began deploying its broadband cable modem solution in 1998 and 1999 through the Ellenbrook development.
“Since then the driver has been on the broadband internet side because of all the issues with the twisted pair and the pair gain technologies on remote interface module (RIM) sites,” Mr Aldridge said.
Broadcast Engineering Services is an independently operated subsidiary of West Coast Radio Pty Ltd, which purchased the company in November 1994. The company was granted registered carrier status in 1999, becoming Western Australia’s second licensed carrier.
The company initially provided design, installation and maintenance services to the broadcasting industry, and has been involved in commissioning AM, FM and STL transmission systems for both metropolitan and regional operators.
Another company offering optical fibre network in Western Australia is Western Power subsidiary Bright Telecommunications, which currently has a network of over 30,000 homes in Perth.
The company is currently looking for equity partners in an effort to roll out FTTH and FTTB to more homes and businesses in the future.
