By CAM LUCADOU-WELLS
AFTER years of sluggish or non-existent broadband in Narre Warren South, local campaigner Steve Barnes won’t miss this golden chance to take his grievances straight to the top.
Mr Barnes plans to address Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull at a community forum on 26 September and present him with an online petition for an imminent NBN rollout in Narre Warren South’s forgotten streets.
“In the past 11 years all avenues have failed to get our area brought into the 21st century,” Mr Barnes said.
“This can be done now but NBN Co have chosen to prioritise areas that have had cable broadband for up to 15 years.”
It’s particularly vexing for Mr Barnes as an IT professional.
He said his one to two megabits-per-second service was so slow his children were unable to access the internet if he was working at home.
Streamed movies or TV shows were unwatchable, he said, because buffering caused them to stall every five seconds.
For Mr Barnes and neighbours in his court, their only options were “excessively slow” cable broadband or “slow and expensive” mobile broadband.
Swifter cable broadband was recently rolled out in a neighbouring street while Mr Barnes’s court remains unconnected.
“People just muddle along, looking at their home emails at work. Some don’t bother with internet at home.”
He said it seemed incongruous that such a populous suburb could have such a bad service.
“It’s probably because we’re too far away from the nearest (telco) exchange.
“Telstra has just been negligent in bringing the area up to speed. I’ve had a lot of history with Telstra to resolve the issue but they won’t.”
Mr Barnes said initially Narre Warren was at the head of the NBN rollout priority-list but it had been “bumped” behind greenfield estates in Narre Warren South and Cranbourne as well as suburbs such as Keysborough, Lyndhurst and Frankston which had existing cable broadband.
La Trobe MP Jason Wood said he organised the community forum so Mr Turnbull could hear residents’ concerns first hand and lead to a plan to remove the blackspots.
“Unfortunately this (problem) is the result of really poor forward planning,” Mr Wood said.
“Telstra only allowed for a certain amount of connections and as soon as they were filled up we had a problem.
“Under Labor’s NBN plans, La Trobe wasn’t even on the radar, so my goal is to bring it directly to the minister’s attention so that we can work on some solutions.”
Casey broadband advocacy spokesperson councillor Sam Aziz said the council had “some success” advocating to the federal government for improved broadband in “blackspot areas”.
He said in late 2012 Telstra installed Top Hat infrastructure to boost ADSL broadband in Berwick, Berwick South, Cranbourne and Cranbourne North.
“With more than 19,500 businesses in the municipality, many of them home-based operations, broadband access continues to be a critical issue,” Cr Aziz said.
“To maintain efficiency, productivity and growth, these businesses need fast and reliable internet access.”
Casey Council maintains an online register for local broadband complaints.
The forum’s venue has yet to be disclosed.
To register for the forum, call Mr Woods’s office on 9768 9164.
To sign Mr Barnes’s online petition got to nbn4nws.asn.au
