• The cost of backhaul services is making it hard for small regional service providers to compete when providing services to regional Queensland.
• This is compounded by ongoing carrier network outages across areas prone to severe weather conditions.
• QCN has announced today ‘Protected as Standard’ to the DC and POI network across Queensland.

Thursday, 16 January 2025 – Regional connectivity, particularly in more remote areas that frequently experience extreme weather events, are often hit with service interruptions and outages. The challenges reported by residents in Cairns this week are a familiar story for many regional communities across Queensland.

The issue at the heart of such outages is that traditional backhaul providers are often using the same duct network, leaving ISP and RSP customers, who believe they have carrier diversity, using the same backhaul path – creating critical risks to their network.

QCN has recognised that the Queensland telecommunications market needs a robust fibre optic-based backhaul network, which can support regional communities 24/7. All along QCN’s 13,000km fibre network, stretching westward to Toowoomba and beyond and into the far northern regions of Cairns, carrier-diverse, protected backhaul are standard into our DC and POI locations, offering Ciena wavelength and carrier ethernet backhaul services.

“We are seeing demand for network diversity significantly increase due to ongoing carrier network outages. ‘Protected as Standard’ is currently offered by no other provider to regional Queensland.

“QCN’s ability to provide carrier-diverse, protected backhaul services is helping us establish a “carrier of choice” position with customers seeking network diversity. We are already providing resiliency services to major carriers, emergency services, government customers, and the wholesale telco market.” – Derek Merdith, CEO, QCN

Our network connects to 220 PoPs across regional Queensland, and all nbn™ POIs. QCN’s fibre network offers backhaul services up to 100Gbps. By protecting these, it guarantees maximum uptime for our customers. To be competitive, to attract jobs and people to our regions, and to make our communities across Queensland stronger and prosperous, telecommunications capabilities that are broad in coverage, high in capacity, and infrastructurally defensive are essential.