Tokyo, Melbourne – NEC Corporation today announced that NEC Australia has partnered with FTTH telecoms specialist OptiComm to supply core and access technology and services to enable OptiComm's rollout of a Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTH/P) broadband network to more than 50,000 new homes and businesses, across a growing number of residential and mixed business property development sites around Australia. OptiComm is working with NEC to substantially increase this number of greenfield estates over the next five years, and to ultimately roll out connectivity to existing homes and businesses as well.
A Hills Industries joint venture company, OptiComm specialises in the design, construction, provision, operation and maintenance of open access wholesale FTTH networks for residential and mixed business use developments. OptiComm offers fair and equitable access for retail service providers and currently has agreements with several ISPs and are finalising agreements with several others to deliver retail high-speed broadband and telephone services over OptiComm's wholesale access FTTH networks.
OptiComm's wholesale approach ensures residential and business consumers in an OptiComm connected area will be able to choose from a range of retail service providers to obtain internet, telephony and subscription television services at competitive prices. The combination of services over a wholesale FTTH network enables property developers to promote “future proof” high speed broadband enabled estates, with no overhead cables and no rooftop antennas that are supported by multiple retail service providers.
For consumers, OptiComm's NEC enabled FTTH network boasts the fastest broadband speed available in Australia, 100Mbps, and the same fibre will also allow consumers to access free to air TV including metropolitan and regional analogue and digital broadcast television channels. For Pay TV, OptiComm's networks are approved to carry Foxtel, Austar and SelecTV subscription TV services. Consumers can also use high-quality standard telephone services and download or stream video on demand, and run a range of smart applications including IP video surveillance and smart metering, all delivered to the home over a single optical fibre.
OptiComm has selected NEC's FTTH optical terminal equipment with 1 Gbps ports to satisfy business user's escalating internet capacity needs without need for hardware change. The same equipment also caters to the interconnectivity needs of business through OptiComm's V-lan Point-to-Point service called “Eline” which is equivalent to a Metro Ethernet service.
“Just like electricity, gas and water infrastructure are essential in the construction of new housing, Fibre to the Home is no longer a nice to have, but a must for new residential and mixed use developments. Indeed, we're seeing it being mandated by many of the large developers who have identified it as a disadvantage not to have high speed broadband connectivity in new homes,” said Phil Smith, General Manager, OptiComm.
John Norton, Executive General Manager, NEC Australia, said: “The market trend towards FTTH in greenfield sites is an absolute logical choice. The flexibility and future proofing that fibre delivers help to deliver prosperity, efficiencies and opportunities for communities into the future. FTTH is essential infrastructure that delivers real social benefits.”
“OptiComm selected NEC as our partner based on the outstanding performance of their technology compared to others we evaluated; NEC was able to bring to the table their vast experience in optical systems delivering voice, video and data applications. The other major decision factor was the strong local support and services capability from NEC Australia,” said Stephen Davies, OptiComm Operations General Manager, and Network Designer.
The FTTH network will implement NEC's GPON technology, developed in Australia at the country's largest telecommunications R&D facility and NEC has also been selected to supply and support Juniper core network equipment. OptiComm's entire network, core, access and TV distribution infrastructure will be managed from NEC's National Operations Centre in Melbourne.
“NEC is uniquely positioned to work with partners such as OptiComm to assist them with rolling out high-speed broadband infrastructure,” Norton said.Â