The State of the Industry report into Trenchless Technology, presented to the No-Dig 2000 conference, showed that the telecommunications industry accounted for over 80 per cent of the Trenchless Technology industry.

By 2000 the telecommunications industry had invested large sums of money in long-distance communications networks involving optical fibre and cable installations. Telstra, Optus and other industry providers have seen, tested and proven mini-HDD and HDD as technologies with immense time and cost savings benefits as well as substantial social and environmental benefits.

The report, prepared by AWT Engineering Pipelines for the ASTT, said that while cable ploughing over long ‘green fields’ corridors is the most economic method of installation in most cases, the use of HDD for waterway crossings, ocean cable landfalls, roadway crossings and within highly-developed and infrastructure congested areas has enormous advantages.

At the time of the report over 800 kilometres of directional drilled installations had been carried out for the telecommunications industry with large percentages of that total being completed for Telstra and Optus. However, suppliers of directional drilling equipment reported a slowing down of work for the telecommunications industry at that time.

The National Broadband Network

The Australian Government has said it will provide up to $A4.7 billion to establish the National Broadband Network (NBN). The Government will also consider necessary regulatory changes to facilitate the roll-out of a new open access, high-speed, fibre-based broadband network, providing downlink speeds of at least 12 megabits per second to 98 per cent of Australian homes and businesses. On 11 March 2008, the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy Senator Stephen Conroy announced the panel of experts to assess proposals to build the NBN.

The scope of the NBN will include;

• the delivery of minimum download speeds of 12 megabytes per second to 98 per cent of Australian homes and businesses
• support high quality voice, data and video services including symmetric
• applications such as high-definition video-conferencing
• earn the Commonwealth a return on its investment
• facilitate competition in the telecommunications sector through open
• access arrangements that allow all service providers access to the network
• on equivalent terms, and
• enable uniform and affordable retail prices to consumers, no matter where they live.

The successful bidder must also have the network rolled out and made operational progressively over five years using fibre-to-the-node or fibre-to-the-premises technology. The Federal Government has gagged the competing NBN bidders, Telstra and consortium Terria, from commenting on the biding process.

The Government is also in the planning stages of the Fibre Connections to Schools (FCS) initiative, which complements the National Broadband Network process. Through the Digital Education Revolution (DER) policy, the Government has committed $A100 million to the FCS initiative, which will contribute to the provision of fibre-to-the-premises broadband connections to Australian schools to deliver speeds of up to 100 megabits per second. In addition to providing fibre to schools, the DER policy states that “schools in remote areas will receive a standard of service, which depending on available technologies such as fixed line, wireless and satellite, will be as close as possible to the standard provided by the National Broadband Network” of 12 megabits per second.

Regional telecommunications review

The executive summary of the Regional Telecommunications review concluded that mobile telecommunications services are not equitably available in many parts of regional Australia.

The review identified the following issues;

• a lack of any ongoing assurance of service availability – the current Federal Government initiatives addressing inequitable access tend to be short term
• a limited geographic terrestrial mobile phone coverage in regional areas, in particular for hand-held mobile phones – an issue exacerbated by aspects of the promotion of the extent of coverage, and
• high prices and service difficulties with mobile satellite services – mobile satellite services do provide Australia-wide coverage, but there is a question whether this service is currently adequate.

The recommendations of the review board included that the Federal Government work with state, territory and local governments to better incorporate the roll-out of telecommunications infrastructure, such as the roll-out of optical fibre during railway extensions, and upgrades to services and the planning of other major infrastructure developments in regional areas. Furthermore the review recommended that the Australian Government work with state, territory and local governments to better coordinate the activities of resource companies and telecommunication service providers to facilitate shared planning and provision of telecommunications and services in regional areas.

To the future

The various initiatives in development may indicate another period of growth for the trenchless industry during the extension of the telecommunications industry in Australia.