By LACHLAN MOORHEAD
NARRE Warren South resident Steve Barnes is no more confident of an imminent NBN rollout in his suburb, despite a visit to the area from Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull last week.
Mr Turnbull attended the Narre Community Learning Centre last Friday to speak at a Communications Forum, convened by La Trobe MP Jason Wood, where Narre Warren residents were encouraged to put their queries to the minister during a question and answer session.
At the forum, Mr Barnes also presented Mr Turnbull with his online petition for an imminent NBN rollout in Narre Warren South.
“It’s good to hear and it’s good to see that the minister understands the issues in the area but I’m not entirely convinced that anything will get done any sooner, because there was no real official commitment,” Mr Barnes said, after the event.
“That does concern me.
“If we’re talking about 2020, that’s another six years away when we’ve already waited 11.”
Mr Turnbull told the forum there would be “excellent broadband” everywhere in Australia by 2019/2020.
When asked by Mr Barnes during question time about Narre Warren South’s sluggish broadband, Mr Turnbull said the previous Labor Government had entered into NBN contracts for areas that were already well served with broadband.
“Unfortunately, as you can imagine, these construction contracts have been set out a long time ago and so there is still work going on,” he said.
“We had to keep, for contractual and other reasons, the project moving along. And there are no doubt some areas which are contracted a long time ago, where fibre is being rolled out which would never have been part of our plan.”
Mr Barnes had previously told the News that 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.
For Mr Barnes and neighbours in his court, their only options were “excessively slow” cable broadband or “slow and expensive” mobile broadband.
State Election candidates Geoff Ablett, Amanda Stapledon and Susan Serey also attended Friday’s forum, as well as Casey broadband advocacy spokesperson Sam Aziz.
Mr Turnbull said a new three-year rollout plan for NBN would likely be prepared by March next year.
“In the more remote areas, and that doesn’t necessarily mean central Australia, that can mean areas on the fringe of the city, which are hard to reach, there will be a mixture of fixed wireless and satellite, and the service level there is 25 megabytes a second, which is still very fast and more than adequate for most residential customers’ needs,” he said.
“In terms of timing, the company is working on a new corporate plan at the moment and we should have, by early next year, by February or March at the latest, we will then have a three-year rollout plan so we can give people more certainty as to where it’s going.”
To sign Mr Barnes’ online petition, visit nbn4nws.asn.au.
