Australia’s Telstra has announced plans to invest in two ‘major’ telecommunication infrastructure projects which will ‘support the nation’s digital economy and enable unprecedented levels of connectivity across Australia’.
Announcing its plans, the telco said the first project involves the construction of state-of-the-art inter-city dual fibre paths, with up to 20,000 new route kilometres being added to increase the capacity of its existing optical fibre network. The upgrade will reportedly enable transmission rates of up to 650Gbps, as well as express connectivity between capital cities up to 55Tbps per fibre pair capacity. Telstra noted that this national fibre network project is a multi-year build which will commence at scale in late FY22, with early trial and test deployments said to already be underway. Discussions with key anchor customers for the national fibre network are also understood to be progressing.
Meanwhile, the second project to be undertaken will see the carrier build and manage the ground infrastructure and fibre network in Australia for Viasat, with this programme to support the new ViaSat-3 terabit-class global satellite system as part of the 16.5 year contract.
Telstra expects to invest up to AUD1.6 billion (USD1.1 billion) outside of its business-as-usual (BAU) CAPEX on the delivery of these two projects over the next five years. The telco said it expects to invest up to 70% of this total commitment across its T25 planning period, or an additional AUD350 million of CAPEX per year over FY23 to FY25.
Commenting, Telstra CEO Andrew Penn said: ‘Investing in these two truly significant nation-building projects will see us continue to have the largest intercity fibre network in the country, helping to future proof Australia’s digital economy and further improving connectivity in regional Australia.’