LEDC enters agreement with NBN to improve regional internet

Leading Edge Data Centres (LEDC) is aiming to improve the ‘digital experience’ for regional Australians by entering into a wholesale broadband agreement with NBN Co for Facilities Access Service. The agreement enables LEDC to build infrastructure for all RSPs to connect to LEDC’s data centres across Australia.

LEDC will also establish dark fibre builds directly into the nbn’s POIs, from each of its regional data centres, to improve connectivity and reduce network latency, for better bandwidth and download speeds. The data centres will provide network hub points across the region, offering greater choice of network providers and helping to establish greater competition.

Chris Thorpe, LEDC CEO, noted that every digital transaction that currently happens in regional Australia must go back and forth to the data centres all located in major metro cities on the backhaul networks, thereby creating a bottleneck scenario and compromising the digital experience for regional Australians.

“nbn facilities access will reduce the backhaul bottleneck. We’re already building data centres across the regions bringing the opportunity for content and service providers to deliver services locally, so with nbn opening up that last mile with the local connectivity piece, the entire digital experience — everything from home internet usage to workplace data exchange — will be improved. Content download speed will be faster and latency will be reduced. This will help to begin levelling the playing field from a digital infrastructure point of view,” said Thorpe.

By enhancing broadband reliability in regional areas, the agreement is expected to accelerate regional migration — a recent trend in Australia, following COVID-19 and the accompanying move to online.

“COVID-19 has laid the groundwork for mass regional migration and we think that better broadband connectivity might provide that tipping point. This will have positive flow-on effects for regional economies and help ease overpopulation in major cities,” said Thorpe.

LEDC will first see measures implemented across 14 LEDC locations in New South Wales, and will later be rolled out in Victoria and Queensland.

Image credit: Leading Edge Data Centres.