NEC touts greenfields GPON rollout as the model for the NBN

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 06 August 2009 13:11

IT Industry - Strategy

OptiComm has announced deployment of NEC GPON gear to provide fibre to the premises in a major greenfields urban development in Victoria, with NEC claiming it to be an ideal model for the planned national broadband network.

OptiComm and NEC announced in March a long-term partnership to roll out 100Mbps FTTH networks using NEC GPON gear to more than 50,000 homes on greenfield estates over the next five years. OptiComm is a 50/50 joint venture between Hills Industries and Asoon, a holding company with shareholders common to Optimal Cable Systems, the distributor in Australia of Alloptic FTTH equipment.

The development, the first to be announced under the partnership and the first in Australia to use GPON for both residential and commercial premises, according to NEC, is University Hill in Victoria, a 140 hectare mixed use development being undertaken by MAB Corporation.

NEC Australia executive general manager, Michael Johannessen, told iTWire: "I believe we have the model for the NBN. I know from my discussions with the minister and his department that they are in very serious dialogue with us because we have a model that works. We are ahead of the back."

According to MAB project director, Jason Wood, University Hill represents a microcosm of urban Australia in that it will contain both residential, commercial, industrial and recreational facilities. "It has two business parks, commercial office space, high tech manufacturing, a town centre, residential precincts, a health and well being precinct."

Wood told iTWire that MAB had purchased the University Hill site in 2003 "with the aim to create a 24 x 7 community where people could live work and play in the one community." He said: "We are about half way through the project; we have about 1000 jobs and 300 people who have purchased units or houses and are due to move in next 12 months. About 50 residents are moving in as we speak. We expect eventually to have 3000 residents and about 3000 to 4000 employees."

The community is also representative of urban Australia in that it not, from a communications perspective, totally greenfield. Wood explained that, thanks to the vision of the local council, Whittlesea, MAB, and other developers had been required to install fibre ducts in the road network. However, at that time, 2005, MAB had little understanding of the potential for fibre, and by the time the agreement with Opticomm was in place, a number of commercial premises had been built and wired with standard copper pairs. Occupants of these buildings will be served from the NEC GPON network via VDSL2 modems located on the premises and which are integrated into the GPON network.


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