$240 million in new fibre investment fuels Bendigo’s broadband boom

Bendigo’s tech corridor is getting a $240 million wiring upgrade. The Bendigo Digital Infrastructure Fund, a partnership between the City of Bendigo and private equity firm Arcadian Ventures, announced Thursday it has closed its first tranche of investment aimed at laying 800 kilometres of new fibre optic cable across the city’s northern suburbs.

The announcement comes as global demand for reliable broadband hits a fever pitch. In New York, slushie machines are being repurposed as cooling stations for overheating home routers. In Silicon Valley, startups are building smart glasses without cameras to avoid privacy blowback. Bendigo’s play is less flashy but arguably more consequential: wiring up entire residential blocks so that a family in Spring Gully can run four video calls and a 4K movie stream without a stutter.

Where the money is going

The fibre will run from the existing backbone on Midland Highway through Eaglehawk, around the new housing estates in Maiden Gully, and across to the Epsom precinct near the Bendigo Regional Tech Park. The City of Bendigo contributed $60 million from its digital economy levy, while Arcadian put up $180 million from institutional investors including the Victorian Superannuation Fund.

“We’ve been running on copper and partial fibre that was laid in 2014,” said a spokesperson for the Bendigo Economic Development Office. “That network was fine when everyone had one device. Now the average household in Bendigo has 12 connected devices. The old pipes are bursting.”

The Bendigo region now hosts more than 230 tech companies, according to the latest Bendigo Tech Census published in March 2026. That’s up from 140 in 2022. The concentration is highest around the Bull Street co-working hub and the former cinema building on View Street that houses a satellite campus for the University of Melbourne’s computing school.

The numbers that drove the deal

The fund’s prospectus, reviewed by The Daily Bendigo, shows that average residential broadband speeds in Bendigo’s outer suburbs currently sit at 42 megabits per second during peak hours. That’s below the national urban average of 68 Mbps. The new fibre build targets symmetrical gigabit speeds, 1,000 Mbps up and down, by the end of 2027.

Arcadian Ventures managing director Tom Rennie, who declined to be interviewed, noted in the fund’s closing letter that the investment is underwritten by a 15-year wholesale contract with three internet service providers that have already pre-committed to buy capacity on the new network. Those ISPs include locally headquartered BendigoNet and two national carriers whose names have not been disclosed.

Construction is expected to begin on August 3, starting along Calder Highway near the Golden Square shopping centre. The first customers will be connected in the Maiden Gully estate by February 2027, according to the project timeline released by the City of Bendigo.

For residents wondering when their street gets dug up, the city’s digital engagement portal has a interactive map showing the build stages by neighbourhood. The Epsom and White Hills zones are slated for the second phase, starting in April 2027. Spring Gully and Strathdale will follow in the final phase, beginning in September 2027.

Anyone living in those areas should expect road closures and temporary data outages during the installation. The City of Bendigo has set up a compensation scheme for businesses that lose trading days due to the construction, something the chamber of commerce pushed for during the planning hearings in May.