[LINK] NSW Ed fibre knitted

[stephen at melbpc.org.au]

NSW Education completes fibre rollout as usage spirals upwards

$350 million worth of contracts on edge of completion as usage increases 
exponentially

James Hutchinson 09 September, 2010 

A $280 million fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) rollout to all NSW public 
schools and TAFE institutions is expected to be completed by the end of 
the year, Minister for Education and Training, Verity Firth announced 
this week.

The Telstra-backed rollout has reached 95 per cent completion, with a 
total 4,500 kilometres of optic fibre being rolled out to more than 2,400 
sites since. 

Schools were targeted to receive connections of between 4 megabits per 
second (Mbps) and 100Mbps depending on requirements, though some reported 
external WAN connections of up 1 gigabit per second (Gbps).

Despite the finalisation of the project later this year, the $280 million 
contract is expected to last a further three years.

Former department chief information officer, Stephen Wilson, signalled 
the importance of the rollout earlier this year as a coping measure for 
the exponential increases in usage by students and staff. 

In March, he reported average data usage of 100 terabytes (TB) per month, 
and indicated expectations this could double by the end of the year.

That traffic surged has been directly linked to the rollout of 66,000 
laptops to teachers and Year Nine students under the Federal Government’s 
$2.2 billion Digital Education Revolution initiative. 

Wilson told CIO the department now had to cope with 500,000 devices in 
total across the network, many of which accessed the network through one 
of 22,000 wireless access points also distributed across schools over the 
past year.

However, Wilson left his posting as CIO at the department after five 
years to become Qantas’ head of technology, leaving the role wide open.

In addition to the fibre rollout, the department signed a separate $70 
million contract with Telstra to double its total bandwidth capacity from 
headquarters to schools to 4Gbps, through two new trunks to be rolled 
out, which had also been completed according to a Telstra spokesperson.

“We expected to run out of capacity and indeed that is the case… this is 
explosive growth by any means,” Wilson said at a Sydney conference 
earlier in the year.

The fibre rollout is also expected to boost use of technology within the 
classroom, as the $158 million Connected Classrooms program sees the 
rollout of new interactive whiteboards and experiments continue with high 
definition video conferencing across classes and for distance students.

“Only ten contracted schools now remain and we expect those sites to be 
connected by the end of this year – which is still within schedule,” 
Firth said in a statement. “The infrastructure rollout has now been 
officially met having exceeded the contracted target of 95% completion.”

http://www.cio.com.au/article/360060/nsw_education_completes_fibre_rollout
_usage_spirals_upwards/

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Cheers,
Stephen