Cameron Howe, The Mordialloc Chronicle
July 3, 2017
Frustrated by snail pace broadband speeds, Aspendale Gardens Residents Association lured Uniti Wireless to the suburb to set-up ahead of the NBN’s flagged rollout in 2019.
Aspendale Gardens Residents Association president Andrew Bearsley believes that Uniti Wireless’ investment has brought the suburb into the 21st century. “It was really bad, we had to plan to download films hours before hand and it’s been really good for the children’s education as they can now freely view content online.”
Mr Bearsley says that the existing infrastructure never supported Aspendale Gardens as a whole, with some residents not even having access to ADSL due to there not been enough lines off the exchange, which forced some residents to spend exorbitant fees to use mobile wireless hotspots. “The challenge is with the coverage and Uniti will be setting up more aerials to cover the remainder of the suburb.”
Uniti Wireless has seized the market opportunity of supplying broadband to fibre speeds whilst maintaining ADSL speed pricing. The rollout of infrastructure throughout Aspendale Gardens, including towers above the Aspendale Gardens Shopping Centre took a matter of months. Many residents have bitten the bullet, made the switch from their existing service provider, and are now enjoying broadband speeds that are on average ten times faster.
Uniti’s Tower Project Manager Matt Hawking says that surveying of the Braeside industrial park has commenced, and anecdotally businesses having struggled with a poor ADSL service are all ears about receiving consistent and superior broadband speeds.
Mr Hawking and Uniti are in discussions with the City of Kingston to provide coverage to the entire municipality via its investments into council owned buildings. Kingston Council’s City Assets and Environment Manager Daniel Freer has confirmed these discussions have taken place, and that similar agreements have previously been entered into with other service providers including Telstra.
The nimble start-up was founded in 2012 in Adelaide and is now targeting the East Coast as it continues to fill a void in Australian’s homes. Co-Founder Che Metcalfe has declared that Uniti are “disrupting the status quo”, and with a vision to revolutionise the Internet, some consumers are even making the switch from the NBN following dissatisfaction with its reliability.
Meanwhile back in Aspendale Gardens residents including Andrew Highman, who initiated the campaign to bring Uniti to the suburb are more than satisfied with the service.
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