QCN Fibre can provide backhaul to all of NBN Co’s points of interconnect in Queensland, the state government owned company has announced.

QCN’s initial work program involved connecting its existing fibre network to six regional NBN POIs in Toowoomba, Bundaberg, Rockhampton, Mackay, Townsville and Cairns. “Our launch strategy was to activate services to these key regional centres by mid 2020. We have achieved that,” said chief executive Derek Merdith.

Merdith added: “When we inspected the more than 12,000 kilometres of fibre we inherited from our parent companies, Energy Queensland and Powerlink, and considered current market conditions, connecting to all 22 POIs became both technically achievable and a competitive necessity.

“Today, there are only two primary backhaul providers to the six regional POIs.  Whilst NBN provides some competition, small ISPs must ultimately rely on a limited range of suppliers for backhaul services from the POI to Brisbane. Regional backhaul currently costs several times that of metropolitan backhaul.”

The CEO said QCN’s backhaul “is critical in supporting local businesses across regional Queensland.” “Through lowering backhaul prices, our customers should be able to lower the cost of NBN business grade services to our regions. Levelling the playing field means that NBN Internet Service Providers can compete with the national carriers,” he said.

QCN will offer 1Gbps, 10Gbps and 100Gbps NBN backhaul options, with the company rolling out Ciena’s Waveserver Ai compact interconnect platform with programmable 400G coherent optics across its edge environment.

“Ciena enables QCN Fibre to transform its network to meet new dynamic requirements for connectivity, especially in remote and rural areas across Queensland,” said Ciena’s managing director for Australia and New Zealand, Matt Vesperman.  “With in creased capacity delivered by Ciena, QCN Fibre is building a more efficient, reliable and scalable network.”

Article in Communications Day – 19 October 2020 – Staff writer