First part of the broadband rollout in Tasmania is to be major towns

The latest plans to roll out super fast broadband services to as many as 200 000 businesses and homes in Tasmania will see three of the states main regional centres benefiting from the new services.

Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd and Premier, David Bartlett recently announced that Midway Point in the south, Scottsdale in the north-east and Smithton in the north-west would be the first locations that would be receiving the new broadband services from the National Broadband Network.

It is expected that with work on the backbone fibre connection already started the second quarter of next year will see the first stage of the rollout take place and will see incredible speeds of up to 100Mbps made available through fibre optic broadband to as many as 5000 premises.

To mark the opening of a new data site that will become the Tasmanian NBN’s nerve centre and to oversee the beginning of the optic fibre installation, the Prime Minister was joined by Mr Bartlett at Aurora Energy’s Cambridge Resource Centre.

Mr Bartlett said “Three regional centres have been selected at the first priorities for delivery of this Network, to enable a simultaneous start to be made in a manner that equalises advantage throughout the State. We recognise the importance of sophisticated communications to businesses and individuals in regional and rural Tasmania, and the community expectation rightly is that we get on with the job as quickly as possible.”

The construction of fibre-backbone extensions on top of the local fibre networks in Midway Point, Scottsdale and Smithton have also been announce by Mr Bartlett, which will include Port Latta to Smithson, Cambridge through Midway Point to the East Coast at Triabunna and George Town through Scottsdale to the East Coast at St Helens.

Source- www.media.tas.gov.au