Regional stations around Australia are in their last weeks of old program lines feeding their transmitters as Telstra moves closer to switching them off. Telstra is working its way around the country taking analog broadcast lines out of service and replacing them with digital alternatives.

Telstra wrote to broadcasters a year ago, warning of the impending change to digital lines, and began the shutdown of its analogue program line network from January 2009.

Many areas are already switched off, and outback stations in rural NSW and Queensland have now received their “last warnings” from Telstra that their services are due to be switched off next month.

The replacement options for broadcasters are Studio Transmitter Links (STLs), audio distribution and remote broadcast infrastructure via ISDN, and POTS/PSTN equipment into IP and 3GIP technologies.

Community Broadcasters have applied for transmission grants to replace their old Tx program lines with STLs, while commercial and ABC broadcasters embarked on replacement plans some time ago and have been working through sites as money allowed.

Many itinerant lines to sporting fields have been replaced with dialup digital services such as TieLine codecs (see link below).

Most capital city broadcasters switched over to digital lines some years ago as part of their digital radio and studio upgrade processes.

From 21st November 2009 Telstra will completely close the network and will no longer offer audio network services.