Faster Broadband On The Move In Illawarra

Illawarra Mercury

Thursday February 7, 2008

By COURTNEY TRENWITH

BY the end of next week, thousands more Illawarra homes and businesses will have access to the fastest broadband internet available in Australia.

Telstra announced yesterday it would activate ADSL2+ broadband at 900 telephone exchanges across the country, including at least two in the Illawarra.

The high-speed internet access, which can be up to 78 times faster than standard ADSL, is already available in some Wollongong and Shellharbour suburbs.

Dapto and Albion Park telephone exchanges will be upgraded within seven days, affecting connections in suburbs including Horsley, Kanahooka, Avondale, Mt Terry, Oak Flats and Yallah.

Telstra Country Wide Illawarra general manager Pat Nolan said more Illawarra telephone exchanges to receive the upgrade would be announced in coming days.

Some telephone exchanges in the Shoalhaven and Southern Highlands also would be upgraded, he said.

However, the service will only be available to Telstra customers.

In areas where ADSL2+ is already activated, the technology is available to customers of other network providers.

Telstra put on hold further distribution of ADSL2+ for more than a year while it sought an assurance from the Federal Government that it would not regulate for the service to be available to third parties.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd gave Telstra that assurance yesterday.

ADSL2+ is capable of downloading up to 20 megabytes per second.

Mr Nolan said the service would benefit families, students and businesses.

"This is good not only for people at home doing things such as internet banking and downloading movies, but also people in education, if they're doing an online course," he said.

"They'll be able to access things faster and be able to get good quality vision, like video quality vision."

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE?

DIAL-UP: Uses a telephone line to connect modems. It can be slow due to phone line "noise" and it cannot be used at the same time as a telephone connected to the same line.

ADSL: Uses frequencies on the telephone line that are not used by a voice telephone call, allowing phone conversations to occur at the same time.

ADSL2+: Doubles the frequency band of ADSL, allowing double the amount of data per second that can be transferred between modems.

DID YOU KNOW?

If you downloaded a 10 megabyte file it would take:

ADSL2+: 4 seconds

ADSL: 10 seconds

Dial-up: 24 minutes

SUBURBS TO BENEFIT

Dapto, West Dapto, Kanahooka, Koonawarra, Horsley, Brownsville, Avondale, Wongawilly, Albion Park, Albion Park Rail, Yellow Rock, Tongarra, Mt Terry, Yallah, Calderwood, Oak Flats.

* Telstra will announce further suburbs in the coming days.

© 2008 Illawarra Mercury

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