The brilliant minds CSIRO have spent the past few years developing a new wireless technology to deliver high speed wireless internet to rural Australia. Now dubbed Ngara – an Aboriginal word from the Darug people that means ‘listen, hear and think”, the technology promises 12Mbps symmetrical speeds for six simultaneous users and is set to be demonstrated next week in Sydney.
The technology aims to take advantage of the analogue TV spectrum once analogue TV is switched off in 2013. By mounting transmitters to current TV broadcasting towers and attaching a modified modem to individual household TV antennas, Ngara makes a unique connection between the tower and the household using a patented beam-focussing technique. The technology currently supports six individual househholds maintaining symmetrical speeds of 12Mbps.
In addition to the direct connection, the technology has also focussed on the wireless backhaul, which can sustain a reliable backend connection of several gigabits a second, which is significantly faster than current solutions for rural customers.
Designed specifically for towns of less than 1000 people, there’s a lot of potential for Ngara, especially given it has the potential to both support more users and faster speeds in the future. Here’s hoping it can make its way into rural Australians homes as part of the NBN rollout