Telstra’s Next IP network expands to the Pilbara
Filed under: business, networks, Next IP, technology
While in WA recently, I took some time out to visit the Pilbara region. Located in the north of Western Australia, the area is known for its vast mineral deposits which support a number of large mining companies who contribute significantly to Western Australia’s economy.
The purpose of my visit was to view first-hand how Telstra is assisting local businesses by upgrading our IP MAN network to a more robust IP MPLS Core.
Mining companies in these regions require high-capacity, high-availability data services to sustain their operations which include widely distributed mines, control centres, transport corridors, community camps and port facilities.
While customers in the Pilbara had access to Telstra infrastructure, the network topology previously meant that data traffic between dispersed sites had to transit to Perth where the Next IP core routers are located. This is a round trip of approximately 4,000km.
The sheer distance can impact on the performance of customer applications due to the time it takes for signals to travel between end points. It also poses a greater risk of a telecommunications network outage due to natural disasters or other forms of network damage – potentially impacting productivity or operations for some of the major companies operating in these remote areas.
To address these issues, Telstra has deployed high capacity devices as Next IP core routers at Newman and Karratha. Now data traffic between sites in the Pilbara stays in the Pilbara.
In short, this means that Telstra’s business customers in the Pilbara will experience a faster more reliable IP network than ever before.
This upgrade is the result of months of careful planning by my team. It provides not only a capital saving for Telstra but more importantly it will be of enormous benefit to our customers.
Telstra’s IP Core now extends from Townsville in Far North Queensland all the way across to the Pilbara in Far North WA. This architectural change in addition to the existing extensive Radio network in WA demonstrates the investment we are making to country regions.
David, great to see the expansion of Next IP to FNQ and the Pilbara. I know customers are already seeing the application performance benefits due to the absence of “trombone trunking”.
Nice to see local DNS recognition will enable local switching of data. I remember loading DNS information into local devices in the southwest to enable local connections, well done.
Services are so slow in Newman of an evening the service is almost unusable. Complaints about paying for a service you can’t use go unheard by your call centre staff in India. Even business critical services we use during the day have become severely affected slowing productivity on a commercial level. If optus had brains it would give you some competition in the area because it could potentially obtain all of your current customers in the area without too much fuss.
Hi Tim, Yes there was an issue yesterday but all restored now I am told. Brendan