| Telstra to smash NBN with 100Mbps cable upgrade? |
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| by Alex Zaharov-Reutt | |
| Tuesday, 10 March 2009 | |
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Although 700,000 homes can already access cable speeds of up to 17Mbps, and a further 1.8 million can access up to 30Mbps speeds, a more-than tripling of these speeds takes the network to 100Mbps and starts getting Australians with access to cable closer to the speeds enjoyed by Internet users in Japan and South Korea. That’s the big catch, of course – only Australians with access to the cable network will benefit, as Telstra is only talking about upgrading the existing network, not rolling out new cable to areas without it. There’s also no word on pricing, but with the first upgrade 9 months away from being switched on, and with Telstra saying it will spend $300 million this calendar year alone, the need to recoup those costs surely rules out any bargain pricing from Australia’s dominant telco and NBN smasher. Telstra says that DOCSIS 3.0 technology has “already [been] successfully deployed in several cable networks overseas” and is now promising to “immediately begin work to turbo-charge its five-city cable network”, with a media and analyst Q&A session at 10.30am to deliver more answers to what will undoubtedly be a torrent of questions. Telstra believes that almost one million Melbourne homes will be able to take advantage of the 100Mbps upgrade, when it is complete, but until the Q&A session we don’t yet know precisely when the other four major capital cities can realistically expect the same upgrade. Outgoing Telstra CEO Sol Trujillo said the “cable upgrade continues Telstra’s strategy of bringing high-speed broadband to Australians”, specifically noting that: “BigPond Cable Extreme transformed the cable network into a high-speed broadband network. Now we are going to the next level: super-fast broadband with download speeds among the highest in the world. Trujillo’s comments continue on page 2, please read on. |
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