Tas Emergency Services go NBN

The Tasmanian Department of Police and Emergency Management will furnish over half of the state's police stations with National Broadband Network internet connections by 2014.

The first location, St Helens, is to be switched over to the NBN in the next six months.

According to the department's deputy director of corporate services, Todd Crawford, the project represents the first time the NBN has been delivered to police and emergency services in Australia.

Crawford told iTnews the network will enable new services such as VoIP and video conferencing to be delivered to the Department’s 1120 sworn officers and 340 state support staff.

“We don’t have concrete plans for the rollout of those services yet, but it’s very likely those are the sort of services we will be delivering over the national network as it rolls out over the next 12 months," he said.

ISP iiNet has been chosen as the "preferred supplier" of the NBN connections under a "managed connections service".

Crawford said that trial NBN connections had been supplemented with "backup DSL connections" to provide assurance for the department and its personnel.

"Given the nature of our work, we couldn’t afford for things to go wrong," he said. "This provided a crucial level of comfort during the transition phase".

The contract forms part of Tasmania’s Networking Tasmania II contract. Telstra is the primary provider of the NTII contract, and iiNet was unable to comment at press time regarding how it will be working with Telstra to deliver NBN services to the Department of Police and Emergency Management.

The scope and cost of the contract was not divulged.