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The Access to Bandwidth project, conducted in 2002, supported
national coordination across all jurisdictions in the VET
field to obtain access to an advanced information and communication
technology infrastructure through high bandwidth technologies
such as fibre optics, cable, satellite, wireless and other
emerging technologies.
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The project built upon existing national and state/territory
efforts and facilitated consolidation of a national approach
to establish a business case and action plan to secure appropriately
priced and distributed access to bandwidth for the VET sector.
The project engaged intensive technological, policy, economic
and lobby expertise that identified:
- The avenues for the supply of bandwidth to the VET sector,
- The economic constraints to low cost VET access to bandwidth,
- The policy constraints to low cost VET access to bandwidth,
- The technology constraints to low cost VET access to
bandwidth.
The Next Steps
Whilst the 2002 project demonstrated that there is in
principle agreement to pursuing a national VET network
in the expectation of significant cost savings, the consultations
also revealed a number of issues which require further
investigation. These will be examined in a project funded
through ANTA National Projects and managed by Western
Australia, in conjunction with FLAG.
The following steps will be taken as part of that project:
- develop
a bandwidth aggregation and collaborative content peering
blueprint that can be endorsed
by the Access to Bandwidth project committee
- identify and
confirm a number of pilot States and Territories that
may take part in an initial
implementation of aggregated services in a controlled manner
- develop
implementation plans for each Pilot State/Territory including
an implementation model,
schedule, budget and assessment framework
- commission and
conduct pilot operations in 2004
- assess the validity of
the pilot operation in mid-2004.
FLAG will report to the ANTA CEOs on details of how
to achieve the national VET network, based on
lessons learnt during the pilots, by October 2004.
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