Emilis Prelgauskas, an Australian architect who specialises in designing environmentally sustainable housing, has lived in a solar-powered house on 50ha of revegetated bushland for the past 25 years.

So when Mr. Prelgauskas turned on his new broadband service from Internode, it delighted him to know that the microwave tower which delivered the service to his home was also powered by the sun.

The Solar Wireless Access Node (SWAN) tower contains six blue solar arrays, charge controllers and has enough battery capacity panels to run for several days without significant sunlight.

With his new broadband service, Mr. Prelgauskas can turn around work in the same day whereas previously it required the receipt and return of work on a CD-ROM delivered by “snail mail”.

Mr. Prelgauskas said broadband had reduced turnaround times from more than a week to just hours. “Broadband has changed the way I do business,” he said.

“Dialup Internet access was not very reliable because the service often timed out, so it could take me six phone calls before I got a clean line. That was one of the big issues.

“I had to drive 7km to the post box at the township of Monarto. Now I don’t have to leave the property physically. I can accept any size emails, so I can do changes and send it out straight away. It not only lets me email people, but 5MB files can come in and go out at reasonable speeds.

“My service runs at multiple-megabits-per-second, so web pages are instant as if they were on the hard disk. We also have an integrated low-cost, high quality Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone service. That’s why broadband is such a good thing.”

Mr. Prelgauskas is one beneficiary of Internode’s major initiative in providing virtually 100 per cent broadband coverage for people living and working in the sprawling Coorong District, an 8800 square kilometre region south east of Adelaide. The five-year partnership between Internode and the far-sighted Coorong District Council has saved the council $30,000 a year in telecommunication costs, halved the cost of phone calls and introduced ADSL2+ broadband.

One of the most significant achievements of the Internode network is the design and deployment of nine solar-powered microwave towers. These sun-powered towers use $12,000 power systems featuring solar arrays, charge controllers and high capacity batteries.

Mr. Prelgauskas connects to his broadband service with a Billion 7402VGP router connected by an Ethernet cable to a one-metre aerial that links his home office to the Internode tower 4km away.

Mr. Prelgauskas said Internode’s solar-powered radio towers played an important role in providing a sustainable broadband network for the rural area. “Once it is installed, it has a very low operating cost and it can be monitored remotely, which gives us a reliable and affordable broadband service,” he said.

‘In my case, not only is the Internode radio tower solar powered, so are my connection aerial, router, and computers, from my own home solar power system.

“Broadband removes one more barrier for people living in rural areas. With broadband, there are a range of social and economic benefits by making it easier for businesses to work with one another.

“The traditional wisdom in society is that people gravitate to cities, and so rural areas become depopulated. Anything that makes it more practical for people to live and work in rural areas, which is where the food comes from for those in the cities, is very sensible.

“A good connection to the virtual world means it doesn’t matter where on the planet you work.”

About Internode www.internode.on.net

Internode is an Internet age carrier committed to using broadband technology to redefine the national telecommunications environment. The Australian-owned company is a trailblazer that delivers the cost and convenience of broadband telecommunications to individuals and businesses throughout Australia.

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