Broken Hill site of teleport facility for NBN’s satellite service

NBN Co has chosen Broken Hill in New South Wales as the site of a satellite ground station to be built in support of the broadband project’s longer term satellite service. Already, NBN’s interim satellite offering has been servicing over 17,000 premises down under, with download speeds of 6mbps being sold wholesale to several Internet by satellite providers.

Broken Hill is considered the capital of the outback, and the new satellite ground facility will be built 9 kilometers away from the city, which is also connected via fibre to the nationwide broadband network. The facility will join the nine others being constructed across Australia that will uplink to the Ka band satellites also being built by NBN, and slated for a 2015 launch

Around 20 to 30 construction workers will be employed during the construction of the ground station in Broken Hill. Accordingly around 300 will be employed for the building of all ten satellite ground stations. Last month, NBN Co announced that it had already awarded contracts to two companies for the project.

Site for eight satellite ground station, chosen by NBN Co

The town of Roma in Queensland has been picked as the site for the eight satellite ground station to be built and operated by the NBN for its satellite services. Previously, three towns were chosen in Western Australia to go along sites picked in New South Wales and Tasmania. A total of ten teleports will be built to support to nationwide broadband project.

According the NBN Co’s spokesman Matt Dawson, Roma was chosen as the new site because of its ideal location and favorable weather conditions. The town is also close to critical infrastructure including the NBN’s terrestrial fibre network. The network operator plans to have ten teleports geographically spread out across Australia.

Mr. Dawson also explained that the project in Roma will create between 20 to 30 construction jobs. Aside from the three WA sites, NBN Co has also picked the town of Geeveston in Tasmania; Bourke and Wolumla in the state of New South Wales; and Ceduna in SA.

The satellite ground stations will support the internet service by the NBN while it readies long-term satellite service expected to start operations by 2015. Two ka band satellites are slated for launch on the same year to provide bandwidth capacity for the satellite internet services.

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