FTTP to Greenfield estates

17-Jun-2009 Following on from the Australian Governments call for submissions on regulatory reform for the NBN, the Government also called for input on how it should manage the delivery of Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) in greenfield estates. TEX Solutions provided the response on behalf of NECA and the Communications and Technology Advisory Group (CTAG). The range of topics covered by the paper included how the government should interface with local councils, developers and builders at the planning stage of a development. The Government is also considering how to phase in any legislation around FTTP between now and when the requirement becomes mandated on July 1st 2010. There needs to be legislation that supports the shift from Telstra being responsible for universal service obligation (USO) in a greenfield FTTP implementation. Currently, Telstra is required to provide basic telephone services to premises. This is a life safety issue as the power for conventional telephones is fed from the exchange. Using fibre, there will be a need to provide local power at the premises. In case of a blackout, this means that battery backup will be a necessity to ensure USO can be maintained. This could mean that we would all be required to change our batteries for our phones in much the same way that smoke detector batteries need to be changed. We will be regularly updating you on what takes place...stay tuned...  

---