Mitch Fifield (Victoria, Liberal Party, Minister for Communications) Share this | Hansard source

The rollout is now more than halfway complete. There are an estimated 20,000 businesses connecting to the NBN network each month. Close to 80 per cent of regional Australia now has access to superfast broadband, meaning that small business owners in country towns and regional centres can enjoy access equal to that of metropolitan areas. As the rollout continues to scale, NBN is enabling businesses of all sizes to tap into a whole range of applications.

Of course, this progress, which has seen over one million NBN services activated since July, is only possible because of the turnaround that's been effected in the project. Connecting more homes and businesses sooner is the key to keeping internet bills affordable and the overall cost of the project as low as possible for taxpayers. For every million connections completed, more than half a billion dollars is added to NBN's annual revenue.