Leaders welcome high-speed broadband for SA

Thursday, 8 March 2007

Federal Education, Science and Training Minister the Hon Julie Bishop tomorrow will launch the new high-volume broadband network, SABRENet, providing virtually unlimited high-speed broadband capacity for South Australia's research and education community.

South Australian Premier Mike Rann will also speak at the launch, highlighting the importance of SABRENet in the South Australian Government's plan to make Adelaide a leading research and education destination for students and researchers from around the world.

SABRENet is an optical fibre broadband network initially linking 27 sites in the Adelaide region including university campuses, teaching hospitals, technology parks and government research institutions, forming part of the national Australian Research and Education Network.

Premier Rann said that SABRENet will also boost research and development in areas connected with the State's booming industries such as mining, defence and educational services.

The technical capacity of SABRENet will be demonstrated at the launch.

SABRENet Chief Executive Officer James Tizard said: "SABRENet was completed in late December 2006, and within two weeks the network was operational, carrying research and education traffic at 10 gigabits-per-second. Today, we will demonstrate how, with SABRENet, enormous medical research data files can be moved around the network in minutes. Until now our researchers have relied on portable hard disks, physically carried from place to place. That will now be a thing of the past."

Also speaking at the launch will be University of South Australia Vice-Chancellor and President Professor Denise Bradley, University of Adelaide Vice-Chancellor and President Professor James McWha, and Flinders University Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) Professor Chris Marlin.

SABRENet Chair Paul Sherlock said: "The South Australian research and education community will benefit enormously from this investment by the universities and the State and Federal Governments in the State's future. Not only will this network allow us to transport huge amounts of data at lightning speeds, it will enable supercomputer real-time simulations, multi-screen high-definition videoconferencing, and it will allow South Australian researchers to participate in global bandwidth-enabled experiments."

"IBM researchers have estimated that if every telephone subscriber in the US made a call simultaneously, the entire load could be carried on only six optical fibres. We have at least 72 fibres to every site, and 324 on some sections."

SABRENet will allow connection to the global research and education community via two 10-gigabit-per-second services operated by the national research and education telecommunications carrier AARNet.

SABRENet Ltd is a non-profit public company formed by Flinders University, the University of Adelaide, the University of South Australia and the State Government. The Defence Science and Technology Organisation is a participating partner, while telecommunications carrier Amcom (ASX:AMM) built and now maintains the network.

Further information on SABRENet can be found at www.sabrenet.edu.au

 

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