NBN Co to pay $5m for second datacentre

The National Broadband Network Company will shell out $5 million over five years for the use of Queensland's Polaris datacentre, the company announced today.

In a statement, the government-owned company said the five-year contract will see Polaris host IT infrastructure as well as its operational and business support systems.

The deal, first outed by iTnews, is a full two years and worth $2 million more than that announced in November last year with Global Switch to host services in its Sydney-based datacentre.

NBN Co head of corporate services Kevin Brown noted in the announcement that the Springfield location of the Polaris centre is near one of NBN Co's second mainland release sites. He also indicated that both the Sydney and Brisbane datacentres will now be fitted with Cisco equipment secured by the company for $9.5 million late last year.

"We now have both our datacentres in place to house this equipment, and plan to announce the successful provider of our [operational and business support systems] in the near future," Brown said.

Springfield Land Corporation director of datacentre development Chris Schroor said Polaris would be able to meet the computing requirements of NBN Co.

"This solution leverages the flexible, high-density Polaris design that can support up to 60kW per rack," he said.