Jobs, jobs, jobs: Corning readies for NBN demand

James Riley
Monday, 07 December 2009 08:47

Business IT - Networking

Corning Cable Systems has been awarded a second contract to supply fibre optic cables to the National Broadband Network project in Tasmania and is readying to scale up its Melbourne factory operation to meet the demand of the broader NBN roll-out.

Corning's Australian managing director Rainer Dittrich said the company expected to add about 35 employees for every 100,000 homes the NBN is rolled past each year, and already has plans in place to add capacity as demand warrants.

In October the company was awarded the first cable contract specifically for the NBN roll-out when it won the business to supply the first 300 kilometres of cabling to be used for backhaul roll-out in Tasmania.

The latest contract, which was awarded by the Tasmanian state-owned Aurora Energy – which is a partner in the state’s NBN deployment – and involves the fibre cables and connectors for connecting homes to exchanges.

Dittrich said the US-based cable manufacturing was keeping a close watch on the Australian market, with the NBN deployment among the largest single opportunities anywhere in the world.

"It's very hard to predict at this point," Dittrich told iTWire. "This contract is for just the first 5,000 homes, so it is very early in the project."

"(But) for every 100,000 homes passed in any year, we have the potential to employ an additional 35 people and we have made a commitment to scale to meet increased demand."

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy called the contract a "significant milestone" in the NBN roll-out and would connect about 5,000 homes in Smithton, Scottsdale and Midway Point by the middle of next year as part of the Stage 1 roll-out in Tasmania.

Senator Conroy said detailed planning for the Stage 2 roll-out was well advanced, including connections in Sorell, Deloraine, George Town, St Helens, Triabunna, Kingston Beach and South Hobart.

"Stage 2 will also include the completion of important backbone links on the East Coast, to Kingston and to the new industrial hub at Westbury," Senator Conroy said.

"This is a great boost for Australia's regional economies and an important building block for the National Broadband Network," he said.

The primary fibre optic technology to be used will be Corning Cable Systems' aerial FlexNAP System where network access points are factory-terminated at customer-specified locations along the length of a fibre optic cable.

Connectorised terminals and customer drops are then connected to these tap points in the field in a matter of seconds without any specialist skills or equipment.

"This technique of construction, similar to an earlier FTTP trial operating in Tasmania, is particularly attractive as the FTTP network can be built much more reliably and faster, requiring a minimum of skilled splice resource," Dittrich said.