WA budgets $120m for mobile coverage, $3.6m for High Performance Computing

By Jacquelyn Holt, ZDNet.com.au on May 21st, 2010

Yesterday, the WA Premier and Treasurer Colin Barnett handed down the state budget, allocating $120 million to upgrade mobile coverage on the state's highways. The three-year project is planned to expand mobile phone coverage on regional highways in Western Australia, with $8.3 million dedicated to addressing blackspots in 2010-11. The bulk of the funds will be used to upgrade communications systems for regional police and emergency services, with Regional Development Minister Brendon Grylls stating: "The shortcomings of mobile telephone coverage on the state's major regional highways need to be improved."

The project will be funded by Western Australia's Royalties for Regions, a state program fuelled by the equivalent of 25 per cent of WA's mining and on-shore petroleum royalty revenue, which is then invested in regional areas.

In a separate program, $30 million will also be spent on upgrading the state's speed and red light cameras, with an intelligent transport system also proposed for the Kwinana and Midland freeways to monitor traffic and incidents.

Computing received a boost with Commerce Minister Bill Marmion announcing $3.616 million for Western Australia' Pawsey High Performance Computing Centre for SKA Science.

The centre is part of the government's $80 million promise in last year's budget to build a supercomputer 55,000 times faster than an average PC. The centre is also expected to help Australia's bid for the Square Kilometre Array telescope. "The centre will significantly boost Australia and New Zealand's chances of securing the $2.5 billion Square Kilometre Array (SKA), a revolutionary international radio telescope for the 21st century. It will also help process and manage the large amounts of data from the Australian SKA Pathfinder radio telescope which CSIRO is currently building," Marmion stated.

The centre is a joint venture between CSIRO and WA's four public universities, with support from the State Government. It is operated by iVEC, an organisation dedicated to building supercomputing capacity in the state.

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