Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is day of some excitement for the Dunkley electorate. Almost 12 years ago I stood in this chamber and outlined a vision for broadband availability in our community. This was long before NBN, this was long before Labor's on-the-back-of-a-coaster plan for technology future; this was when we were dealing with the reality on the outer metropolitan areas of our city of a range of different technologies and infrastructure that was not homogenous. How do we get broadband services to those areas?

My research led me to understand that in the United Kingdom the voice distortion tolerance levels for telephone calls is higher than it is here in Australia. If you have tones like Dennis Walter or John Alexander it might not be silky smooth, but you can still understand what is happening. And because of that greater tolerance for voice distortion, those little packets of data that you use for DSL broadband could be thrown further across the traditional phone network than the 3½ kilometres.

I put this to Telstra. I said, 'Let's road-test this. Try it in my electorate.' They did and guess what? It worked! But nothing changed. The voice distortion limits were not changed, but they are about to change. For those areas in my electorate that are awaiting the NBN, as our government has the herculean task of turning it around to focus on areas of underservice or unmet needs—and that is an important change in focus for nbn co—there is greater prospect for DSL based services to reach well beyond 3½ kays, as has been the limit in the past. That is a great day for everyone. It is a good day for my city.