The trials will involve the research agency testing the technology across multiple analogue television spectrum channels among 12 user sites in Armidale, which is also a mainland trial site for the National Broadband Network. According to communications minister, Senator Stephen Conroy, some 90 per cent of the 5739 eligible premises have opted for a fibre-to-the-home connection.

CSIRO used six user sites over a single seven megahertz (MHz) analogue television channel in its last trials, carried out in the NBN-connected Tasmanian town of Smithton last December.

Where the last trials included streaming content, video conferencing and web browsing, the Armidale trial will involve using an updated version of the CSIRO’s e-health collaboration Remote Immersive Diagnostic Examination System (RIDES). Along with effectively cutting the wires to the bandwidth-intensive application, the next big step in the Ngara trials would be the use of channel aggregation, CSIRO ICT Centre director, Ian Oppermann, told .

“With one seven megahertz channel our target was 12 megabits per second to and from a farm for six or twelve users, depending on how much electronics we threw at it,” he said. “The next step is to aggregate channels so we have 100 megabits per second (Mbps) we can share between the uplink and downlink."

According to Opperman, the channel aggregation method could yield speeds of either 75Mbps downlink and 25 uplink, or synchronous 50Mbps speeds both up and down.