As part of Turnbull’s review into the National Broadband Network, Malcolm Turnbull says that he’s on a hunt to find the worst broadband areas in Australia to prioritise them. Is it you?
In an interview with Meet The Press over the weekend, Turnbull said that part of the strategic review will be to prioritise areas with poor broadband in order to deploy fibre to the home to them first.
He added that he’d like to see NBN Co run as a successful business:
The goal – the – our policy is very clear. We have got a survey underway to identify those parts of Australia that have the worst broadband – you know, where the need for upgrades is greatest. And they will be prioritised. We’re also – the NBN will also focus on rolling out upgraded services to areas where there is the greatest demand – you know, business, industrial parks, business areas – where you can actually generate some early revenue.
You know, this is – the NBN Co has to start being operated – and this is happening now, with the changes we’ve made – like a rational business, that seeks to do its job as quickly and cost-effectively as possible.
Turnbull also defended the recent NBN rollout map drama, saying that wiping homes off the map was a necessary task designed to restore truth to the process of the network deployment:
Those householders were victims of Labor’s lies and spin about broadband. Labor invented all sorts of misleading metrics. Now, they had a metric which said that construction had commenced at the point plans were called for. So if I said to you, “I’ve started constructing my house,” you’d think there were actually builders on the site. This is the equivalent of saying you had started construction on a new house, from the moment you called your architect and asked her to do a sketch plan.
So I’ll give you an example. There was one area – about 3,000 premises in Prospect, in South Australia, in Kate Ellis’s electorate, in fact – where they said construction had commenced in April 2012. Well, it’s now November 2013. Nothing has happened. Nothing has happened. Not even the designs have been finalised. So what we wanted to do, and what we will do, with the NBN is tell people the truth. We will build the NBN – we’ll construct it. Those – everyone will get access to the NBN. But I don’t want to have premises and areas on a map being promised a service when there is no – when we simply don’t know when it can be delivered.
So, this – the whole culture at the NBN is changing. This is no longer about spin. It’s about fact. So we are stating where building work has actually commenced – where work is really being done. We’re speaking English, instead of Labor spin.
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It’s when the construction contract is signed with the particular contractor for a specific area. And yes, the shovel will hit the dirt, as it were, immediately thereafter. And the – again, to be clear – Labor went into the election leaving the Australian people under the impression that by June 30 next year there would be 1.13 million premises passed with fibre in the built-up areas, the so-called brownfield areas.
Labor knew, Albanese knew, that the NBN had already said they were only going to get to 600,000. That was in the draft corporate plan, which he kept secret, and despite my prodding him and urging him, would not reveal. Now, we have put enough designs into the pipeline to ensure that by June 30 next year, 600,000 premises will be passed with fibre. So the same number of premises will be passed with fibre by June 30 next year under our Government, as there would have been if Labor had been re-elected.
If you think you have the worst broadband in Australia, do a speedtest and share the link in the comments!