Future Cairns: Home internet growth with housing shortage fix as new development begins

New developments in the coming decades will ease the housing crisis but faster, more reliable internet speeds in the home will also be needed. Read what this telco is doing to make that happen.

New developments will help ease the housing crisis but modern homes in Cairns over the next few decades will require faster, more reliable internet speeds.

Optus North Queensland general manager Dave Morrissey said the business would need to prepare for future growth and had already implemented measures.

“We constantly are reviewing the footprint. We do liaise with developers and they reach out to us, we also work with councils on planning,” he said.

“It’s an ongoing part of our commitment to looking at customer experience. We see traffic where traffic flows.

Optus North Queensland general manager Dave Morrissey. Picture: Supplied.

“Before people develop an area, we see the people on the network.

“We invest where we get those insights of growth corridors, it’s quite often we would already have a mobile tower covering because of the highways before the development even starts.”

Mr Morrissey said a huge focus towards 2050 was expanding innovation and technology for people’s use of internet in their homes. He said internet in the future would need to be more focused on being able to connect more things to the net like fridges, doorbells and airconditioning.

“The more devices you need the more connectivity you will need,” he said.

“It’s going to need more bandwidth.”

This has already begun in some parts of the household.

“We would put a home Wi-Fi connection with a modem but quite often we will have a booster that provides better Wi-Fi connectivity at the house,” he said.

“It’s back to user experience, people don’t want to go to the kitchen to get that Wi-Fi experience.

Originally published as Future Cairns: Home internet growth with housing shortage fix as new development begins