Feb 1 newspaper standard

POLICE NEWS

YARRAM Police are still investigat ing a number of break-ins in the Commercial Road central business district overnight on Sunday Janu ary 15. Thieves gained access to Yarram fresh Flower, Carina’s Hairdressing Salon and Wild Earth Mother businesses and stole several

items. They attempted to break into the Yarram Mower shop as well however they were un successful. Yarram Police advised that they do have quite a bit of CCTV footage which they are currently looking at but are urging anyone who may have more footage, information or witnessed anything suspicious around that time to please come forward.

NBN upgrades coming

PORT Albert residents were given an insight into planned NBN upgrades in their area at a special meeting with NBN representatives recently. Rowan Lace, Community Ambassador nbn local Victoria South Eastern region out lined the time frame for the upgrades The upgrades will deliver faster speeds to nbn fixed wireless and nbn Sky Muster customers. These upgrades will benefit homes and businesses, not just in the local area but across regional Australia with faster internet. The upgrades are scheduled to com mence in May and the investment aims to deliver four major benefits including: Extended Fixed Wireless: Enhanced coverage and extended maximum range limit for some nbn® fixed wireless towers resulting in expansion of the fixed wireless footprint coverage by up to 50 per cent en abling approximately 120,000 formerly sat ellite-only eligible premises to access fixed wireless services. Faster Fixed Wireless wholesale speeds2: Following consultation and launch, nbn proposes that homes and businesses in the expanded nbn® Fixed Wireless foot print will be able to order retail services via their service provider over nbn’s wholesale

tiers proposed to offer potential maximum wholesale download speeds of up to 100 Mbps. nbn is aiming that up to an anticipat ed 85 per cent of the expanded footprint will also be able to order services with potential maximum wholesale download speeds of up to250 Mbps, which is up to three times faster than the highest wholesale speeds available today. Improve Fixed Wireless typical whole sale busy hour speeds3: Fixed Wireless net work improvements are expected to allow nbn to implement a new measure to indicate the network’s capability to achieve ‘typical wholesale busy period speeds’ of at least 50 Mbps (download). Enhanced data limits and network per formance on nbn™ Sky Muster: For the homes and businesses that remain on nbn Satellite, nbn is proposing to unmeter nbn® Sky Muster Plus data for the majority of the day with the off-peak period for unmetered data increasing to 16 hours (12am - 4pm) per day, from the current six-hour window (1am – 7am). This is anticipated to be applied from mid 2022. In addition, for regular Sky Muster, nbn is aiming to increase average monthly data allowances to 55 Gigabytes (GB), in creasing to 90 GB once the fixed wireless upgrade is complete in around two and a half years’ time.

A new and improved topping surface has been rolled out along the walking and bicycle track through Langsborough and into Port Albert. New surface welcomed

LOCAL bicycle riders are enjoying the new surface recently spread along the bicycle and walking trail through Langsborough and into Port Albert. In November 2021, many regular riders expressed concern and disappointment about the surface of track. They claimed parts of the track were un rideable and riders had to divert to the main road in certain sections, which in their view was unsafe. At the time Wellington Shire Council commented on the concerns of locals say ing that they were seeking external funding to ‘repair and improve drainage and the sur face’. Council had deployed officers to inspect the track on numerous occasions to get a good understanding of the issues with the track. Over the past few month’s contractors have been working on the track with Wel lington Shire Council confirming that the fi nal stages of the work for the bicycle trail is due to be completed this month. Wellington Shire Council’s 2018/19 budget allocated $462,000 to the construc tion of the 7km bicycle trail between Alber ton and Port Albert. Wellington Shire Coun cil providing $116,000 for the works with the Latrobe Valley Authority funding $346,000 towards the project. “Due to the time required for land acqui sition and native vegetation assessments for the planning permit; the tendered price exceeded the available budget in late 2020,” a spokesperson for Council said.

“At the time, Council made the decision to complete the foundation track works us ing crushed rock with the intention to com plete the final surface at a later date as fund ing opportunities allowed,” they said. In mid-2022, Council was successfully awarded $150,000 in additional funding as part of Federal Governments Local Roads and Community Infrastructure Program – which allowed for the completion of final topping works on the path,” they said. Council stated that these current works are the finalisation of the original works. “These works are not repairs but finalisa tion of the original works, which at the time was limited due to available budget.” The spokesperson went on to say that in addition to these works, Wellington Shire Council has contributed $500,000 as part of the 21km Great Southern Rail Trail project which will see the extension of existing sec tions of path between Yarram and Port Al bert to the South Gippsland Section which extends from Nyora to Welshpool.

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Wednesday, February 1, 2023 - THE BRIDGE - Page 19