RURAL and farm businesses relying on satellite for internet connectivity may be finally able to do so under a business plan.
NBN Co, executive general manager, Gavin Williams said the company was passionate about helping to bridge the digital divide.
“We understand the impact providing access to fast broadband for businesses may have on opening up new market opportunities, driving innovation and increasing productivity,” he said.
“Our team is currently gearing up to launch a new wholesale business-grade satellite service for remote and rural Australia.”
In February, NBN Co announced a deal with global remote communication and IT solutions company, Speedcast Managed Services.
Mr Williams said the deal would bring a satellite service, dedicated to business, to market.
“The NBN Business Satellite Service will be complementary to our existing retail Sky Muster satellite service which, until now, has been primarily intended for residential use,” he said.
Currently rural and remote businesses relying on satellite for connectivity are essentially limited by data and speeds suitable for personal use.
Unless a business registers multiple dwellings, it is limited to a potential maximum of 200 gigabytes of data a month during business hours under the current fair use policy.
Mr Williams said the new service would have two broad wholesale category product offerings for phone and internet providers.
Firstly bandwidth services, designed for businesses with more complex networking requirements including wide-area network connections to multiple locations.
Secondly, broadband internet, designed for businesses requiring more broadband data, higher speeds and business-grade service levels.
Mr Williams said the business satellite service would be achieved through utilising the currently underutilised Sky Muster spectrum.
“We anticipate using less than 15 per cent of our overall capacity on the access technology,” he said.
“We will use this spectrum and parts of the Sky Muster satellite infrastructure such as our nine ground stations to support the service.”
Mr Willaims said the the service will only be made available to customers where there is spare capacity to deliver the service.
“These typically sit within remote locations away from the eastern seaboard where we have higher take-up of our existing Sky Muster product.”
Mr Williams said the Business Satellite Service will support remote and rural businesses by helping to support online applications such as video conferencing and cloud-based services.
“It will be crucial for the oil, mining and gas industries,” he said.
“As it has the capacity to connect in non-addressable remote locations where a number of these sectors run their remote offices.
“For farmers in rural Australia, this service is being developed to help enable them to better leverage new technologies such as remote monitoring, video conferencing and livestock tracking devices to save time and potentially reduce operational costs.”
“It’s also being designed to help businesses with online storage and backup network solutions, as well as provide critical communications support to disaster-recovery operations.”
Mr Williams said a report commissioned by Telsyte revealed Australian businesses using satellite services was expected to grow by more than 30 per cent by 2021.
He said the service would be trialled in late 2018, with a planned launch date in the first half of 2019.
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