Moncrieff Media
Gold Coast’s broadband network caught in a web
03 August 2009
Gold Coasters will have to wait until at least the end of 2010 before they will get the Rudd Labor Government’s much-hyped national broadband network (NBN), local MP Steven Ciobo says.
More than three months after the NBN was announced to much fanfare:
· The government is no closer to a launch of the much-vaunted $43 billion project
· The Coast still has no answer on when the project will be rolled out here despite the region asking for priority installation
· This month’s rollout in Tasmania has been plagued by delays and will start nine months late
· A leading national financial advisory has declared the project “not commercially viable”
Mr Ciobo said all the omens for the NBN looked bad, with delays to the start of the project, doubts over the financial viability of the project and that fact that the government’s own finance management arm, the Australian Office of Financial Management, hasn’t even been consulted.
“Labor already failed at one attempt at a broadband scheme, it’s been more than three months since this initiative was announced, and now Tasmanians have been told their rollout will be nine months late,” Mr Ciobo said.
“First the rollout is bungled and now a Senate select committee has been told that the project is not commercially viable.”
Mr Ciobo said the developments were particularly frustrating to the Coast where the council had made information and communications technology a pillar of its plans for economic development and had requested the government make the Coast a priority area.
“The council’s plans have already borne fruit over the past few years with more than 400 established ICT companies,” Mr Ciobo said. “Gold Coasters continue to wait for progress on the broadband network, all the while the Government has not even named a company to carry out the installation. Delays to the rollout of the NBN won’t be doing the council or the Coast any favours.”
Mr Ciobo said while it was vital for all Gold Coasters to have high-speed broadband services, the latest news coming out of the Senate committee hearing has cast doubts over the whole scheme and whether taxpayers should be forking out $43 billion. This enormous cost to locals seems absurd, especially as much of the Coast is already connected to a fibre optic network through PowerTel.
“Nowadays, Gold Coasters rely heavily on the internet, whether that is in our health departments, in our school’s education system, our business dealings or our personal lives, the internet effects us all. But maybe it’s time for the government to reconsider its hasty and ham-fisted attempt at a national broadband network.”