Bass Coast To Set Up Broadband Network
The Age
Tuesday November 25, 1997
A SHIRE council in Gippsland will set up a community operated broadband wireless network for cheaper phone, fax and data calls using $250,000 from the Regional Telecommunications Infrastructure Fund (RTIF).
Bass Coast Shire Council, southeast of Melbourne on the Gippsland coast, straddles the 056 and 059 area codes as a quirk of recent municipal boundary changes.
The council seeks to use its internal telecom network in a scheme to reduce telecommunications charges to residents and businesses.
The Bass Coast wireless local area network (WLAN) will offer free local calls to subscribers in Wonthaggi and Cowes where council offices are already linked by microwave. It will also allow them to bypass STD charges for calls between those towns and to Melbourne, through a new microwave link and 03 gateway direct to the Melbourne CBD.
The proposal was made with technical advice from Motorola Australia's Radio Parts and Services Group, which plans to publish results of the Bass Coast system as a model for other municipal councils with similar communications problems.
Russell Grimmer, of Motorola, said Bass Coast was an ideal site to try a turnkey wireless solution because it had experience of microwave to overcome an STD boundary. Its size was typical of the target markets for Community Operated and Managed (COAM) carrier networks. Bass Coast's population is 20,720.
The WLAN will be configured as a wireless local loop (WLL). Residents and businesses within a radius of about 6 kilometres of the central facility will have access to the new services in Wonthaggi and Cowes.
Richard Alston, Minister for Communications, unveiled more than $15 million of RTIF funding yesterday for 35 projects, including three others in Victoria and a national initiative by the University of Ballarat designed to link isolated students.
Tasmania was the only state to get funding in the first batch of approvals by the RTIF committee earlier this year and this week received grants for another six projects.
Six projects were approved in New South Wales, four in Queensland, four in Western Australia, six in South Australia and two in the Northern Territory.
The other Victorian proposals are an electronic commerce awareness program in La Trobe Shire, jointly managed with Monash University, a Cyber Coffee Shop for public network access on the Mornington Peninsula involving the Salvation Army, and a communications study of the requirements of the Western Murray region.
The largest allocation was $5.6 million for the Farmwide Online services managed by a National Farmers Federation enterprise. Five other projects worth more than $2 million won preliminary approval but require further technical work before being given the go ahead.
Bass Coast's initiative is expected to lure new business to the area. Other regional centres in Victoria have devised call centre investment packages for companies looking for the benefits of lower costs by relocating out of metropolitan areas.
Ted Sandeman, principal consultant of call centre specialist, Price Waterhouse, indicated that lower communications costs were not the only factor; wages and equipment had to be included, too.
He said communication costs were usually higher for country call centres dependent on the catchment area of the calls. The Melbourne CBD link promised to lower costs for possible call centres in Bass Coast.
© 1997 The Age