HyperOne bolsters national fibre backbone with more connections

Australian fibre infrastructure startup HyperOne has revealed it has increased the number of connections to its national fibre backbone across regional areas throughout the country.

The startup, founded by serial entrepreneur Bevan Slattery, plans to deploy a 20,000 kilometre, $1.5 billion fibre backbone network across Australia, aimed to carry at least 10,000 terabits per second. The network aims to provide “improved offerings” to existing NBN retail service providers and broadband providers.

In an announcement, the company revealed it had bumped up the number of “on and off ramps” across regional areas to 2000, doubled from the 1000 when the project was first announced in February 2021.

Slattery said regional Australia had “enormous” untapped economic potential but had been held back by a lack of quality digital infrastructure.

“The opportunity is there - and I think we are going to see an explosion in regional economies over the coming decades as we work to close the digital divide between major cities and country areas,” he said in the announcement.

Slattery added Australia’s existing fibre backbones “effectively bypassed” many of the
communities along their routes, and it did not have enough options for customers in regional areas to connect into.

“In many cases, you have communities with backhaul fibre right under their feet but have no way to access it and are stuck with subpar broadband or satellite connections,” he said.

“That won’t happen with HyperOne. This is a true national network, not a capital city network.”

The network also aims to enable more people to live beyond Australia’s capital cities while retaining jobs that have traditionally been based in metro areas.

“The COIVD experience has shown us that, in many industries, people can work from anywhere - provided they have fast and reliable internet. HyperOne will open up more opportunities for people to do these jobs from regional communities,” Slattery said.

HyperOne also revealed construction on the project’s first stage is expected to start “soon”, aiming for a completion target of 2024.