The water link - think fibre

With the Central Coast’s Mardi-Mangrove water infrastructure project in its proposal phase, a great opportunity exists for the local communities along this link to explore what other infrastructure benefits the project could offer.

In the telecoms industry we call this trans-sector thinking – we look at whether the effect of this investment can be multiplied to provide other economic and social benefits.For example, fibre optic cable could also be included; this can be used to deliver fibre-to-the-home (FttH). There could be some interesting opportunities here under the government’s National Broadband Network (NBN) plans.

In countries like Norway, the Netherlands, and now in New Zealand, we have seen that property owners can become involved – they can dig the trench from the main cable to their homes, making it economically viable to get the infrastructure all the way to their homes. This will not just deliver internet access; it will also provide access to e-health, tele-education and energy-saving smart meters.

Just in case, it might be a good idea to also check what the electricity company is doing. They could use this infrastructure project too, to underground some of their cables and create a smart grid. I am not sure about this last one, but I would certainly advise the communities involved to investigate the fibre link as well.

Paul Budde is the Managing Director of Paul Budde Communication Pty Ltd – an independent telecommunications research and consultancy organization. He lives at Bucketty on the Central Coast.

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