Justine Keay (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Urquhart and I are again calling on the Prime Minister to direct NBN Co to deliver fibre-to-the-curb technology to the west coast of Tasmania. NBN Co's response last week to questions on notice demonstrates its west coast rollout is in chaos. The response revealed NBN Co has still not finished the design work for the region, the ready-for-service date has been pushed out to late 2018, and NBN Co has no idea about local employment during construction.

Earlier this year, NBN Co changed designs for some mainland towns from fibre-to-the-node to fibre-to-the-curb technology. This is not surprising, as fibre to the curb pushes fibre deeper within the network and delivers faster and more reliable download and upload speeds compared to fibre to the node. It's something the people of the west coast of Tasmania and everywhere else in regional Australia deserve. After the announcement, Senator Urquhart wrote to NBN Co CEO Bill Morrow to inquire if the west coast fibre-to-the-node rollout would also shift to fibre to the curb. What an opportunity for the people of the west coast to have this new technology! At the time, NBN Co staff were noncommittal and replied that fibre to the curb would likely be incorporated in Queenstown, Zeehan and Rosebery, but not for the whole towns.

In its latest response to questions on notice, NBN Co somehow claims both that the west coast design is too far along and that the detailed design process has not yet concluded, so it cannot disclose the exact technology to be used. This was a question on notice, and this was their response through the Senate process. But I was on ABC radio in Tasmania last week, talking about this unknown technology the people of the west coast are going to get, and a minute after I finished my interview Russell Kelly, the Tasmanian manager for NBN Co, tweeted on Twitter that they were going to get fibre to the node. So we can't get a proper response through the Senate questions on notice process, but on Twitter we can get it within a minute of going on radio. NBN Co cannot have it both ways.

Households and businesses on the west coast are screaming out for improved broadband. This is a region that has had significant downturn through mining, but the local copper mines of Tasmania are set to reopen after a number of years of being on shutdown. This is a great opportunity for that mine to get greater technology to be able to communicate with Mineral Resources Tasmania and their parent company in India, which they now have to do by sending a CD-ROM or USB stick through Australia Post. This is critical technology that regional Australia deserves, and it's about time the Prime Minister does something about it.