opportunity ENTERPRISING

It may not look much like a bustling business hub, but the Port of Bundaberg at Burnett Heads’ commercial business offering is quietly expanding.

Gidarjil Development Corporation has established a growing business here. The Gidji Café, Yalga-bini Institute, water treatment plant and Murra-Wolka workshop have all planted roots here and continue to grow, thanks to accesses to the latest technology

Working with Queensland Computers, Gidargil have been able to connect to the National Broadband Network’s (NBN) Enterprise Ethernet product, giving them access to the same speeds as any business in a city area.

Queensland Computers Business Account Manager John Anderson said his company was about to almost triple Gidarjil’s connectivity, in terms of speed and bandwidth.

“On a technical level, we’ve done a lot out here to fix a lot of major networking and connectivity issues. We took them from having no connectivity between the buildings, to being all connected. They’ve all got the ability to work remotely and have a decent connectivity around the site as well,” John said.

“We’ve been able to ‘catch up’ with the technology, enabling them to confidently make business decisions around the future of this site.”

The Yalga-binbi Institute provides online skills, training and knowledge across the Central Queensland and Wide Bay Regions. CEO Elise Cottam said reliable internet will enable them to expand their offering further.

“We’ve noticed the difference, absolutely. We do online classes and it can be hard learning through the internet, even without it breaking up and cutting out. This upgrade has given us a stable connection, so it opens the door for more courses to become online now,” Elise said.

Lifting the digital capability of businesses throughout Queensland is what the National Broadband Network (NBN) is all about, with Enterprise Ethernet - a premium, high performance fibre access network designed to be both fast and reliable.

Head of NBN Local Queensland Kylie Lindsay said the nbn network had helped Australians do more.

“This improved access to technology will open the door on many new opportunities for businesses across the country. As the digital landscape continues to evolve, so too does the nbn business offering,” Kylie said.

“We expect demand for higher speed services to grow over time, as businesses further invest in technologies that require reliable, secure, high- speed broadband connectivity, including those in regional areas.”

Eligible business customers are now able to order broadband based on wholesale speed tiers of up to almost 10Gbps — up to ten-times faster than before.

Enterprise Ethernet has applications across many different business types, sizes and industries. These include health professionals supporting highly data-intensive imaging, to schools requiring plans based on dedicated wholesale bandwidth, franchises running business critical and cloud applications and small to medium businesses with high upload and download requirements looking to move into the next phase of their digital transformation.