The three-year, multi-million dollar deal with existing outsourcing partner Fujitsu encompasses new transmission technology and is tailored to deliver efficiencies by:
- outsourcing a lot of work to Fujitsu,
- streamlining the individual contract process for new projects and
- increasing the use of the power grid by installing more sophisticated technology to monitor the network,
The deal extends the upgrade of TransGrid's 1,500 km signal network to an SDH fibre-optic network from an older microwave system. "The microwave based network was in the same spectrum which is now being used by the 3G network," Jones told ZDNet Australia . "So we had to exit that."
TransGrid would have had to increase its telecommunications capacity anyway, since the analogue microwave system previously in use didn't have the bandwidth to support the level of monitoring required by the deregulated electricity market, which requires a lot more data to be sent around the network.
The SDH optical fibre network being installed runs the STM4 standard at around 150 Mbps, and is in talks with several organisations concerning broadband access, including AARNet, which is negotiating access for the University of New England in Armidale. "We have capacity which in the short term we're not making use of, and we sell off that capacity for other services," said Jones, adding that if an organisation wanted more bandwidth then TransGrid had in excess, the power company could light up some optical fibres currently not in use.
TransGrid owns and operates a state-wide telecommunications network with an extensive range of communication and high voltage transmission line towers, which are available for use by third party organisations as infrastructure.
The NSW government has previously offered state-owned infrastructure as a basis for an organisation wishing to deploy broadband services to rural NSW. The contentious issue has seen state and federal governments pass the buck over who is responsible for providing rural broadband, with the federal government trying to increase services to a level that will allow the sale of the rest of Telstra.
"Effective telecommunications is essential in a major electricity transmission network," said TransGrid chief executive, David Croft. "The transfer of our core telecommunications network from the older microwave technology to a high-capacity optical system was a very important project".
That is a load of BS. State Rail never opened up there network we wanted to buy 155MB of capacity from state rail and they told us there network wasn't finished and the capacity wouldn't be available for another 2 years. And that was only a couple of months ago. So let me clarify state rail does NOT have an open network. Unless they just didn't like us.
The federal government needs to put in a not for profit organisation that owns the fibre and sells it off