Telstra said today that it intends to invest $300 million this year to upgrade its hybrid fibre coaxial cable to 100Mbps, with Melbourne to get the upgrade first, which is due to be completed by Christmas.
Telstra CEO Sol Trujillo (Credit: Suzanne Tindal/ZDNet.com.au)
The Victorian capital will be the first to get the revamp, with the installation of DOCSIS 3.0 software and related infrastructure to start immediately. The upgrade will increase the peak download speeds in Melbourne premises to 100Mbps and further upgrades could achieve speeds of up to 200Mbps.
Telstra's cable currently reaches 2.5 million homes in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth; 1.8 million homes are able to reach up to 30Mbps with a further 700,000 reaching speeds of up to 17Mbps. Telstra did not specify which city would next receive the upgrade.
After the news that it was excluded from the National Broadband Network process, Telstra said it would look to upgrading its fibre cable network.
"Late last year, Telstra foreshadowed that we would continue our investment in our cable network and, with the DOCSIS 3.0 software now well-established internationally, we have the ability to dramatically increase speeds into Australian homes," outgoing Telstra CEO Sol Trujillo said.
He laid out some of the benefits of the higher speeds, including downloading high-definition films for viewing in a very short time, as well as controlling camera angles in a sports game.
Telstra would use the cable as a platform to deliver new services. "As well as super-fast broadband, it is important that this upgrade will turn the cable network into a two-way, fully interactive platform paving the way to an array of existing and next generation services for customers," Trujillo said.
They say timing is everything! And here we have the company finally announcing something they have known about for many months at a time of where the C.E.O and Chairperson are putting the company into disrepute and NBN details to be revealed! Shareholders.. please they were not upfront with you at the AGM and played with your share price by bringing it down to 2 year lows. The company needs to managed and lead by true leaders who can be challenged on their views. Dictatorship practices are clearly not in the best interest of the country.
�We run an absolute dictatorship and that�s what�s going to drive this transformation and deliver results� If you can�t get the people to go there and you try once and you try twice� then you just shoot �em and get them out of the way��