Revealed today, the Geeveston, Huon Valley is the third NBN satellite ground station to connect rural areas to the $36bn high-speed fibre broadband network. The Tassie ground station will act as an “essential transmission centre to deliver the National Broadband Network to homes, farms and businesses in remote areas,” NBN Co said today. The site is at Harwoods Road, 6km north of Geeveston, in Tasmania. Locations in Tassie, the first state to receive NBN, including Port Davey, Strathgordon and Cradle Mountain will benefit from satellite service due to be available by 2015. Construction is expected to begin early next year. This is the third NBN satellite station announced – two others are located at Merimbula and Bourke in NSW – and 10 such facilities are to be unleashed nationally. NBN Co refused to comment on the other seven seven satellite locations although a spokesperson told SmartHouse: “we’re in the process of conducting commercial negotiations for the remaining seven sites” and will make announcements once access is negotiated. NBN Co also confirmed it has 7000 “active” customers on its Interim satellite service, expected to run until 2015. The NBN satellites will transmit high speed broadband to 200,000 households in rural locaitons across Oz, part of the satellite, fixed-wireless and fibre optic cable mix. |
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| “The NBN satellite service is designed to bridge the divide between the city and the bush,” said Matt Dawson, NBN Co’s Program Director, Satellites .
“The site at Castle Forbes Bay near Geeveston is ideally located for this purpose. It is also close to reliable power and other infrastructure,” he added. The ground station will be a single story building with two 13.5-metre diameter satellite dishes. |
