Expand secures contract with Norfolk Island

Peter Dinham
Sunday, 19 April 2009 15:58

Business IT - Technology

Tiny Norfolk Island’s sole telecommunications provider, Norfolk Telecom, has implemented optimisation technology in a deal with Expand Networks which Norfolk says will result in savings of $80,000 a year.

Expand Networks says Norfolk Telecom has deployed its WAN optimisation technology, with will give the company savings in its satellite bandwidth costs, as well as and boosting bandwidth across the territory by as much as 100 per cent.

Heavily dependent on communications services, Norfolk Island, an Australian self-governing territory, is home to about 2,000 people, and is located in the Pacific Ocean between Australia, New Zealand and New Caledonia. It covers just over 34 square kilometres and was settled in 1856 by descendents of the Bounty mutineers who moved there from Pitcairn Island.
 
Norfolk Telecom maintains the territory's network of around 2,500 landlines as well as a prepaid mobile network, internet services and the satellite communications network.
 
The island’s residents are dependent on a telecommunications infrastructure which, according to Expand, was burdened by bandwidth and capacity limitations.

Steve O'Brien, APAC VP for Expand Networks  says that “with all of Norfolk Island's voice and data communications dependant on parallel satellite links, there are few aspects of life and business that are not reliant on Norfolk Telecom's ability to prioritise traffic over the WAN.”

According to O’Brien, Norfolk Telecom was looking for a way to ensures acceleration of all applications on the network to maximise the island's virtual proximity to the rest of Australia. 

“We introduced a combination of compression, TCP acceleration for web traffic and web and FTP caching to deliver immediate improvements in bandwidth and traffic speed.  The result was an overall increase between 25 and 50 per cent in bandwidth available across the network - up to 100 per cent in some areas.”

Stuart Robertson, chief technology officer of Norfolk Telecom says Expand's technology has enabled the company to improve its service offerings, doubling the bandwidth it can offer and reducing the latency experienced by customers when using internet based services. 

“We have cut costs by avoiding the need to upgrade our satellite links and the ease of use, quality of service and priority traffic functions of the Expand accelerator ensures our remote location does not inhibit the function of key community services.”