Regional Victoria to get broadband boost
Regional Victoria to get broadband boost
Mar 07, 2005: As part of the Bracks Government’s aggregated telecommunications purchasing strategy, regional Victoria is to benefit from a $6.5 million expansion of Telstra’s mobile broadband network.
“Telecommunication use is vital to Government delivering the best quality services to Victorians,” said Victorian Minister for Information and Communication Technology, Marsha Thomson. “The Bracks Government undertook to aggregate its telecommunication purchasing to not only lower the cost of these services to Government but also to ensure the community benefited from increased infrastructure investment, particularly in provincial Victoria.
“The tender for the first portion of the Government’s business not only reduced telecommunications cost to Government by more than $100 million over the next 5 years, but it also secured $30M of new telecommunication infrastructure investment for Victoria."
As part of the deal, Telstra has committed to invest $6.5 million in expanding its mobile broadband coverage as part of its recent successful tender for the State Government’s mobile services business.
“Due to this commitment, state-of-the-art Telstra Mobile Broadband, which is now available in Ballarat, Geelong and the Melbourne CBD, will also be rolled out to other locations around Victoria over the next twelve months starting with Bendigo and Seymour," said Thomson.
Ms Thomson said the Bracks Government sees telecommunications services as critical to the economic and community development of regional towns and welcomed the investment by Telstra in the mobile broadband network.
“The Telstra Mobile Broadband will particularly benefit businesses that will be able to access the Internet at broadband equivalent speeds while away from the office or home with the rollout of Telstra Mobile Broadband.
“Broadband services also have the potential to deliver enormous benefits to the regional health sector through eHealth applications such as remote diagnosis, overcoming the distance barrier.”
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