Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Bilyk for her ongoing interest in this matter. On 8 April 2009 the government announced that Tasmania would be the launch state for the National Broadband Network. Two hundred thousand Tasmanian households, businesses, schools and hospitals will be connected with fibre to the premises delivering speeds of 100 megabits per second and the rest with next generation wireless and satellite technology. The rollout in Tasmania is now well underway. Construction of the backhaul links to the stage 1 communities—Smithton, Scotsdale and Midway Point—began in September last year and has now been completed. On 1 June I opened the nerve centre of the Tasmanian network—the network operations centre that will manage network traffic, take service orders and coordinate service installations and network maintenance. I am pleased to advise the Senate that we are on track for the first live services to be delivered in these areas in just a few short weeks.

iiNet, Internode and iPrimus have already signed up with NBN Tasmania and have released introductory prices for the stage 1 communities in Tasmania. They have already signed up their first customers. There has been a huge amount of community enthusiasm for the NBN in Tasmania. So far in the three stage 1 communities the sign-up rate for an optic fibre connection is almost 50 per cent. This includes homes, businesses, schools, libraries and hospitals, and the NBN will transform Tasmania. (Time expired)