The Australian Government’s 3-year Broadcasting Resilience Program (BRP) will provide $20 million to improve the resilience of 107 ABC radio sites used for emergency broadcasting which are at a higher risk of service failure due to natural disasters.
Work will include establishing standby power facilities and backup program inputs, upgrading site access and flood protection as well as deploying state based mobile recovery units to quickly re-establish broadcasting services in the event of outages.
The $20 million work program will:
- establish 55 new emergency power systems (e.g. battery and diesel backup) at ABC Local Radio sites
- establish backup program inputs for 77 ABC Local Radio sites to quickly re-establish broadcast services
- deliver civil and infrastructure upgrades to 10 ABC AM sites in areas susceptible to flooding
- deliver 5 rapid recovery assets that can be rapidly deployed anywhere in Australia during a natural disaster or other significant event.
The upgrades on these sites – including multiple types of upgrade on a single site – will also benefit other service providers including commercial broadcasters and telecommunications providers.
This announcement is in addition to the $50 million Telecommunications Disaster Resilience Innovation (TDRI) program announced by Minister Rowland last month. Both the TDRI and BRP are part of the Government’s $656 million Better Connectivity Plan for Regional and Rural Australia funded in the October 2022 Budget.
