About

Beechmont has been familiar with a rather primitive Internet service. The Telstra Exchange on the Beechmont roundabout is housing a wonderful but now outdated Plain Old Telephony (POTS) exchange and some ADSL digital subscriber line access multiplexers (DSLAMs) for Internet delivery over copper phone lines. Once upon a time this was the best technology could offer. But today, fibre optics have taken the lead and the National Broadband Network Corporation (NBN Co) is rolling out their glass fibre cables as fast and as wide as they can. But for many, the roll-out of this wonderful technology is not fast enough and not widespread enough.

Beechmont is not on the NBN Co fibre-to-the-home roll-out list. The Beechmont village is simply too small for NBN Co with much less than the 1000 home cut-off NBN Co has set. Most likely, satellite is all that Beechmont will ever see of the NBN Co efforts. And due to the latency, that is not a very nice solution for SIP telephony or for video conferencing.

So, what can we do? Well, Telstra has already come to the rescue in some way. Sometime during mid 2012 the microwave backhaul capacity to Beechmont was beefed up and by August 2012 the Beechmont Exchange on the roundabout was equipped with ADSL2+ equipment, which is twice as fast as the old ADSL gear. ADSL2+ can deliver line speeds up to 24 Mbps but this declines rapidly on longer line lengths.

Lower Beechmont had ADSL2+ for some years. Beechmont village has since August 2012 ADSL2+ ports and an improved microwave back haul. For some reason Beechmont customers already on the older ADSL1 DSLAM have not been automatically moved to the newer ADSL2+ DSLAM. Although the Internet package pricing is the same on either, Telstra have presumably reserved the new ADSL2+ ports for their existing customers who would want to move up their plan, or simply ask to be connected to the ADSL2+ service. So, if you have a need for speed, ring Telstra and get yourself moved to the best today's copper technology can offer.

There are some restrictions. Unlike the NBN Co fibres, with the old copper telephone lines the maximum speed goes down with line length. That looks like this:

    • 300 meter - 25 Mbit/s
    • 500 meter - 24 Mbit/s
    • 900 meter - 23 Mbit/s
    • 1.2 km - 22 Mbit/s
    • 1.5 km - 21 Mbit/s
    • 1.8 km - 19 Mbit/s
    • 2.1 km - 16 Mbit/s
    • 3 km - 8 Mbit/s
    • 4.5 km - 1.5 Mbit/s
    • 5.2 km - 800 kbit/s

This is road distance, where the telephone cables are ran. So, if you are really far away from the Beechmont Exchange, you'll be out of luck and have to do with a lower speed. There are some other solutions here, like the Telstra RIM boxes with Top-Hats, or private microwave connections, but that is another story........

There are Telstra RIM boxes near Farm Grove road and near Akoonah drive. Both of those locations do not have ADSL2+ but do have ADSL1 ports, although they seem to be full with some people still waiting for a connection.

There is a website where you can find out about ADSL connections. Go to: