Telstra completes South Brisbane exchange copper-to-fibre migration
After 18 months of toiling, Telstra has finished converting the South Brisbane exchange's copper infrastructure to fibre ahead of schedule.
The project was a result of the construction of the new Queensland Children's Hospital on a site occupied by the old South Brisbane exchange. As a result of having to move the exchange, Telstra decided to force all premises in the area to upgrade to fibre, something that stirred up a storm of controversy within the telco industry.
The fibre network now covers 18,000 services and is made up of 284km of cable providing fibre access to 13,000 premises in the region.
During the course of the construction, Telstra laid 26.4km of new conduit and replaced or upgraded 1,661 pits. It is the largest Optical Distribution Network project Telstra has undertaken. Roughly 120 technicians were given training about fibre technology solely to work on this project.
"For anyone located in the South Brisbane exchange area, it will be business as usual from now on, as connections, disconnections, and faults on the new network will be managed directly with their telecommunications service provider," Telstra said in a blog post.
The telco will spend the next five months decommissioning the copper network and recovering copper cables, as well as recycling scrap material.