Sanctuary Cove won't wait for NBN fibre

James Riley
Tuesday, 06 October 2009 10:43

Business IT - Networking

Queensland resort and gated community Sanctuary Cove isn’t waiting for the National Broadband Network to roll past its upmarket residences, and will instead roll-out its own fibre to the home infrastructure in preparation for higher bandwidth services.

The estate claims it is the first major “brownfield” site to retro-build FTTH infrastructure, connecting the 1,100 existing homes and hotel, with plans to connect a further 800 homes that are under development.

At a cost of between $2,000 to $2,500 per home, the network will cost up to $4.5 million. It will be open access and community owned and is being built and managed by a consortium that includes Universal Communications Group (UCG), Telcoinabox and Utilibill.

UCG general manager Roger McArthur said the consortium hoped the Sanctuary Cove model would be used in other estate roll-outs across Australia in the lead up to the NBN’s build phase.

"There are probably a few smaller estates that have done fibre, but this is certainly the first large estate in relation to an open access network (roll-out)," McArthur told iTWire.

ACT-based infrastructure based service provider TransACT has also announced fibre roll-out plans to existing homes, and has confirmed that it is already discussing with the NBN Company the possibility of rolling some or all of its assets into the national network.

McArthur said that while Government had mandated that all "greenfield" sites must include fibre connections from the middle of next year, gated community and strata-based "brownfield" sites had no clearly defined strategy in relation to NBN connection.

Sanctuary Cove had been planning an upgrade of its existing coax  connections, and opted to build open access fibre, giving it ownership of the assets and the greater flexibility to add its own services – in particular its CCTV security cameras.

UCG will market turn-key fibre solution with its consortium partners to other brownfield sites, ranging from apartment buildings to residential blocks to retirement villages.

"The greenfield market is large, but slow growing in terms of connecting homes to fibre. In fact only around 10,000 new estate sites nationally have been connected so far.  The real market is the brownfield sites … (and) soon they will be forced to address how they will be connected to the NBN," he said.