DELAYS in the rollout of the National Broadband Network may have been the focus of heated discussion in a Senate estimates hearing last week, but Geraldton-based Market Creations has seized the opportunity and is stepping in to fill the void.
The company has established what’s understood to be the state’s first commercial data centre outside of Perth and is laying high-speed fibre in lieu of the NBN.
Geraldton is planned as one of the first locations in Western Australia to receive the NBN, and while work has begun on building the system, a start-up date is already months behind schedule.
Market Creations and Geraldton Data Centre managing director Darren Lee said the incremental rollout was leaving the region’s business community in the lurch.
“We’ve got areas in Geraldton that are high-density clusters of businesses and quite large-scale businesses that are really let down by a lack of network or connection infrastructure,” Mr Lee told WA Business News.
“Geraldton’s not going to be lit up overnight and some of these business clusters aren’t in the first part of the rollout. They’re asking why the NBN is going to a suburb of mums and dads when there are business issues that need to be solved.”
In response, Market Creations is launching the first stage of its Geraldton Data Centre next month and looking to take advantage of those businesses struggling with inadequate broadband services.
“We’re taking fibre out to three high-density clusters where we know there is a lack of service provision,” Mr Lee said.
“We think we’ve got a very fertile market there where we think we can talk to customers about coming on board with us because the service they’ve got at the moment won’t be fixed in the short term by the NBN.”
Mr Lee said the company had also launched the Geraldton Data Centre business to cater to increasing demand for remote data hosting
from companies aligned with the resources sector that needed to be flexible with staff numbers according to contracts.
With a local data centre available, Mr Lee said those companies could increase or decrease their computing capacity and storage without the need for capital investment in hardware.
The first stage of the Geraldton Data Centre will initially provide 18 racks of space and cloud-based services.
Investment of about $1.7 million has been used to pay for a broadband supply agreement with Nextgen over a three-year term, hardware from IBM, and other costs such as power supply.
Mr Lee said the business had a number of proposals before Geraldton-based companies, which were becoming more accepting of the idea of remote data hosting and cloud-based services, but he expected interest to increase once the NBN was eventually switched on.
“It’s going to make people think about connectivity in a whole different way; we are going to expect and want better connectivity, higher speeds and more available access, so it gets people thinking in that space a bit more,” he said.
The company is also pitching its services to the Perth data centre market as a backup, and has appointed a Perth-based business development manager.
The second stage of the Geraldton Data Centre is tipped to launch in the first quarter of next year and intended to provide space of up to 120 racks at a cost of about $3 million.
NBN Co came under fire last week for delays in rolling the network out in WA.
Almost a year ago the company said its construction contractor, Syntheo, had begun work on taking the service to about 33,600 premises - with some construction work beginning as early as September 2011 in Geraldton.
The initial timeframe was to have the service switched within 12 months of construction starting, but NBN Co chief executive Mike Quigley conceded in the Senate that none had gone live as yet.
The company declined to answer WA Business News'" questions about reasons for the delay, but said the first areas in Geraldton, Victoria Park, Mandurah, South Perth, Applecross and Pinjarra would be ready for service towards the middle of the year.
“We are working closely with our contractor, Syntheo, to achieve our rollout targets,” it said in a statement.
