By Alesha Capone
Five suburbs in Melbourne’s west will be among the first in the state to have network sites built as part of Optus’ 5G home broadband rollout.
The telco last week announced the first 30 suburbs and towns in Victoria where it plans to build the sites, including Braybrook, Laverton’s west, Hoppers Crossing, Williams Landing and Maidstone.
Other areas on the list include Greenvale Reservoir, Kensington, Geelong West, Norlane, Rye Central and Campbellfield South.
The Optus sites, to be built by Ericsson, are set to have the antennas and equipment needed for 5G access installed across the coming months, although the locations are subject to change due to varying factors, including site acquisition.
Optus’ head of network access planning and quality, Kent Wu, said: “We are working closely with Ericsson to conduct critical inter-operability device testing so that we can deliver a compatible 5G home broadband product to customers and open these sites up as part of our expressions of interest campaign”.
Fifth-generation cellular network technology, or 5G, provides broadband access, and is expected to deliver faster internet network speeds and allow more devices to connect to the network at one time.
Optus is planning to build 1200 5G sites across Australia by March next year.
Optus has opened expressions of interest for customers from the 30 selected Victorian suburbs and towns to register their interest in connecting to 5G home broadband.
See www.optus.com.au/5G to check availability.
