The Upper Blue Mountains and Hawkesbury have been left off a list of places in line for access to improved NBN services for the second time, Federal Member for Macquarie Susan Templeman has confirmed.
The Morrison Government last year announced an initial list of suburbs and towns where NBN would overbuild the copper with fibre, in the areas with Fibre To The Node (FTTN). This would allow people to have faster and more reliable internet by accessing fibre all the way into their home.
"Both the Blue Mountains and Hawkesbury Local Government Areas (LGAs) were left off that initial list," Ms Templeman said.
"On February 10, NBNCo announced the next tranche of residential upgrades, and while places like Bathurst and Orange, and Narellen and Campbelltown were on the latest list, the needs of the Blue Mountains and Hawkesbury were ignored.
"Our region has suffered the dual economic blows of bushfire and the COVID-19 pandemic over the past 12 months. According to the National Bushfire Recovery Agency (NBRA), the Blue Mountains took a $65.4 million hit to its economy, and the Hawkesbury lost $33 million, in the 2019/20 bushfire crisis alone.
"This, of course, came before the pandemic hit, when local residents were forced to run their businesses, study or work remotely.
"The Blue Mountains was one of the first areas to receive FTTN, an experiment that has highlighted the inadequacies of combining 21st Century fibre with 19th Century copper technology.
"I have been inundated with stories from residents about slow or non-existent connections that made going online virtually impossible.
"Broadcaster and co-founder of the DoSomething Foundation, John Dee, has world-class equipment at his Katoomba base, but has had to resort to pre-recordings rather than live broadcasting because the internet is simply too unreliable for his international clients.
"That increases his costs due to editing time, and there's some jobs he simply cannot go for because being 700 metres from a node is halving his available speeds.
"I also spoke to Bruce Sinclair of Leura, who is a retired principal and not only educates his peers on staying connected online, but is an avid gamer.
"Bruce has given me a log of his FTTN service dropouts, which continues even though his equipment has been professionally installed and checked and is among the latest in gaming technology.
"As Bruce points out, many essential services have moved online - how can older residents who maybe unsure of technology possibly expect to move online smoothly when there are so many problems?
"I was somewhat relieved last year to hear the government had admitted defeat and planned to upgrade FTTN to FTTP, although only in certain areas and at a so far unknown cost to the end user.
"Being overlooked twice for FTTN to FTTP upgrades is deeply disappointing to those residents in both the Blue Mountains and Hawkesbury regions who have been trying to run a business, study or home school or simply stay connected throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
But federal communications minister Paul Fletcher said "there is no way" the government will be lectured on the issue by the Labor MP.
"When the Coalition was elected in 2013, after six years Labor had connected only 51,000 premises to the fixed-line network. Today, nearly eight million premises are connected and more than 99 per cent of all premises in Australia are able to connect," he said.
"In September last year, I announced a $4.5 billion NBN network investment plan will give up to 75 per cent of fixed line premises across regional and metropolitan Australia access to ultra-fast broadband by 2023. This will occur via a continuation of the 'multi-technology model' that has been used to deliver this enormous project efficiently and economically - and in time for the extra demands placed on the network due to COVID-19.
"The areas to be included in the Fibre to the Home upgrade will be progressively announced by NBN Co in coming months.
"In short, there is no way that we will be lectured by Susan Templeman and the Labor Party on how to deliver broadband to Australian households and businesses," he said.
An NBN spokesperson said: "The National Broadband Network is the digital backbone of the nation. Now we have completed the initial build, we will continue to invest in the nbn to be ready to meet the evolving needs of residential and business customers.
"NBN Co will progressively continue to select, design and construct new fibre extensions in metropolitan and regional areas across Australia in the next two years and is aiming to pass around two million premises by the end of 2023."
