IT Leaders creates Australian first: Very High Speed (low cost) Internet for remote areas
Linc Energy was not the first Australian company who faced challenges with getting high speed connectivity into a remote area.
Their Gas-To-Liquids plant outside of Chinchilla in Queensland is a world-leading energy technology that can turn coal into diesel and other liquid fuels. But being so far out west, there are very limited options for high speed Internet to link the plant back to their headquarters in Brisbane.
As one project we were working on for Linc Energy, we looked into every available internet option including DSL technologies, frame relay, two-way satellite, 'megalink' and microwave. Frame relay was initially chosen because it was the simplest technology to hook into their existing Telstra private network, but Telstra later advised the exchange at Chinchilla could not handle frame relay. Satellite was attractive for simplicity and scaleable speed but the capital and running cost was prohibitive.
A more complex, DSL/Microwave link was the next likely candidate, but it was going to cost at least $70,000 initially and also create multiple potential points of failure and multiple vendors to manage.
So IT Leaders' engineers then looked into the possibility of using multiple wireless connections. We knew that the wireless signal strength in the area was good but a single connection did not have enough bandwidth for the client. Some research indicated that that what we wanted to do had never been done in Australia before.
We imported some specialist technology and joined three wireless connections together, with a series of high gain, strategically located antennas and a load balancing multiplexing router.
The solution worked perfectly. For around half the monthly fee or less of any other suitable solution, and a small amount of setup cost, Linc Energy now has highly effective, partially redundant, high Internet bandwidth at their remote facility. Combined speed is a consistent 5.8Mbps download and 1.8Mbps upload. That is three times the speed of Frame Relay, at half the cost, and closer to one tenth the monthly fees of a two-way satellite link with that downlink speed.
We can duplicate this configuration almost anywhere in Australia, for the benefit of Linc Energy's expansion plans, and for any of our other clients or enterprises that require it. We can also add other levels of redundancy into the solution, for example adding a low bandwidth copper based connection (such as DSL, ISDN, one-way satellite or low end frame relay - whatever is available) and have automatic failover. This allows essential internet based services to continue to run in the event of a major wireless outage.
Adopting this innovative solution is just another example of how Linc Energy is a pioneer of new and creative technologies.
Please contact IT Leaders of 07 5597 5355 to discuss high speed Internet for your remote site.
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