Telstra spends $2.7m on Perth fibre link

Telstra has added another link between Perth and Adelaide, spending $2.7 million on building a fibre link between the two cities through Darwin.

The announcement is below:

Telstra has reaffirmed its commitment to customers in Western Australia completing capital works worth more than $2.7 million.

The recent completion of a $2.7 million link from Adelaide to Perth via Darwin provides additional communications resilience and redundancy for local WA businesses by providing a third network traffic path for Telstra's Next IP™ network.

Telstra Country Wide Executive Director for Western Region, Peter Fairclough, said the upgrade was further demonstration of Telstra's strategic investment in secure and reliable networks and next-generation infrastructure.

"Telstra already has a great deal of redundancy built-in to our networks, and this latest infrastructure upgrade is further proof of our commitment to our customers in Western Australia.

"Thanks to this $2.7 million investment, in the unlikely event that Telstra's existing fibre links between Adelaide and Perth are severed at the same time, our network monitoring engineers can manually route traffic via Darwin.

"This means that Telstra customers in WA can remain connected to the Telstra Next IP™ network while important repair works are completed to the other traffic paths," Mr Fairclough said.

The Telstra Next IP™ network is the largest fully integrated national IP network in the world. The ability to switch traffic along an existing fibre-route via Darwin was made possible by the installation of additional channels into existing 10Gbits per second Dense Wave Division Multiplexing (DWDM) systems from Perth to Darwin and Darwin to Adelaide.

"Telstra is already a strong contributor to Western Australia and this $2.7 million investment demonstrates our commitment to residents and indeed local business."

Mr Fairclough said that West Australians were also enjoying access to faster fixed broadband services following further upgrades this year of 33 local Telstra exchanges in areas including Exmouth, Moora, Boddington and Coolgardie to ADSL2+ technology.

"ADSL is a high-speed broadband internet service which lets you use your phone or fax line while you're on the internet. ADSL2+ gives you the capabilities of ADSL with even faster speeds. Typical customer speeds are up around 50 times faster than a 256kbps ADSL connection.

"Telstra's networks are supported by a proven roadmap of innovation and investment. We have been able to develop this roadmap thanks to the close working relationships we have across the state with our local communities," Mr Fairclough said.