The Broadcasting Resilience Program (BRP) provided $20 million over 3 years from FY2022–23 to BAI Communications to improve the resilience of 98 ABC AM and FM broadcast sites across Australia. All upgrades under the BRP have now been completed.
The sites that have been upgraded as part of the program:
- are used for priority emergency broadcasting during natural disasters
- have no or at-risk backup power to run their transmission facilities if the power is disrupted
- are at greater risk of failure due to being in a bushfire area or other natural disaster.
There were 4 stages of work funded under the BRP:
- Stage 1 established upgrades to standby emergency power facilities ( for example, battery or diesel generators).
- Stage 2 provided backup program inputs (for example, satellite links and/or dishes) to those sites at higher risk of failure.
- Stage 3 completed flood mitigation design work.
- Stage 4 deployed 5 state-based mobile broadcast assets (MBAs), which are deployable recovery units to quickly re-establish broadcasting services in the event of outages.
The funding is part of the Australian Government's Better Connectivity Program.
Completed projects
The following map identifies the ABC site locations where the BRP construction work has been completed, as well as home bases for the MBAs. Sites may have multiple work projects undertaken.
Under the program, a total of 131 projects were completed:
- 126 projects completed at 98 ABC AM/FM sites:
- 21 sites had upgraded standby emergency power facilities installed (navy dot).
- 51 sites had backup satellite program upgrades installed (teal dot).
- 26 sites had both emergency power facilities and satellite program upgrades installed (white dot).
- 5 MBAs constructed and deployed at locations across Australia (green dot).
