Telstra's other National Broadband Network?

Stuart Corner
Monday, 10 November 2008 09:08

Opinion and Analysis

"An ethernet backhaul capacity in the core of our Next IP network actually help drive the speed and reliability of our Next G network...Over 15 years ago we started investing in optical fibre for our 2G network rollout, and now we're actually upgrading that fibre to gigabyte Ethernet back haul...Our lab tests and our field tests have shown when combined with our roll-out of fibre and fast ethernet, this network will deliver true high speed connectivity on the move."

All good stuff. But leaving aside the high data rates charged for Next G, the more customers Telstra tries to serve over it, the more base stations it needs because all the users on a base station, and nearby ones, have to share the same, very limited amount of spectrum.

So guess what? This wireless network with optical and ethernet backhaul starts to look more and more like a fibre to the node network - except that the location of those nodes bears no relation to the topology of the copper telephone network.

So the big question going forward is to what extent Telstra's Next G network could underpin its high-speed broadband based media comms strategy in the absence of an NBN?

The answer to that question is partly technical and partly economic, and I am qualified to answer neither. But remember the limitations imposed by spectrum are felt initially only in the most densely populated areas.

And Telstra seems very confident it will soon get access to the huge bandwidth (100MHz) it needs to upgrade Next G beyond HSPA to the 100MHz+ bandwidth of LTE.

From where I sit the upgrade path for Next G seems far more predictable than that of the terrestrial broadband network, thanks to the deeply flawed NBN process.