NBN Co will invest up to A$1 billion ($879.4 million) on two Ka-band satellites as part of its plan to deliver high-speed broadband services within Australia.
Addressing a conference, NBN Co’s CEO Mike Quigley said the two satellites would deliver 2% of the project’s total capacity.
Government-backed NBN Co aims to connect 90% of Australian premises with fiber-based services and 10% with next generation wireless and satellite technology.
“The fact is even within 40 or 50 kilometers of Sydney and Melbourne there are places you can only get to with satellite,” Quigley is reported by Computerworld as saying.
Quigley said NBN Co had no choice but to invest up to A$500 million apiece on two new satellites.
“There is simply nowhere near enough the capacity in today’s satellite services over Australia to provide the sorts of services we are talking about – that is, close to the wireless service of 12 Megabits [per second] at peak and be able to do a lot of bandwidth,” Quigley said.
But satellite firm NewSat recently told Computerworld that it could deliver broadband speeds of more than 100Mbps to the 7% of Australia not covered by NBN Co’s fiber network for an equivalent cost.
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