Coast NBN won’t be finished until 2026
IT could take another eight years for the National Broadband Network rollout to be completed on the Gold Coast if the current rate of installation continues.
New figures obtained by the Gold Coast Bulletin reveal just 8000 homes have been readied for the service in the five months since July at a rate of 1600 each month, leaving more than 59 per cent of the city’s 285,000 homes without the ability to connect.
If the current rate continues the city will not be fully connected until 2026.
But NBN Co says it is on track to make fast broadband available to all Australians by 2020.
“Our goal is to ensure that all Australians, including those on the Gold Coast, have access to fast and reliable broadband as quickly and efficiently as possible,” an NBN spokeswoman said.
“The Gold Coast is a mix of technologies. The complexity that is introduced here is that more civil works are required as a result, some known at design phase, others uncovered during the build phase.
“It is due to unforeseen reasons such as this that projects may extend beyond our estimated completion time.”
The scheme began more than five years ago on the Gold Coast. Building has commenced or completed in many Gold Coast suburbs with 64,000 homes officially connected.
But the rollout has been plagued by delays and criticisms during the past four years, with warnings ahead of this year’s Commonwealth Games that the city faced international embarrassment if the rollout was not sped up.
Fury is growing over the delays. Gold Coast business woman Paula Banks said she has waited over a year to be connected.
The Miami resident, who runs a small firm and the annual South Gold Coast Small Business Expo, operates in a connected area but continues to wait for the connection to her home.
She said she had been forced to work with an internet dongle as the connection date kept shifting.
“It is ridiculous. It is now 12 months since the projected completion date that was originally shown,” she said.
“I have had to keep adjusting my plans as it changes.”
In the past year the NBN has also faced increased competition, including the Gold Coast City Council launching its own high-speed internet.
Kieran Fugle, of Gold Coast-based teleco CommsPhere said he was now directing customers away from NBN to 4G internet because it offered comparable speeds and greater reliability.
Gaven MP Meghan Scanlon said she regularly had angry constituents contact her.
“The rollout of the NBN is an international embarrassment,” she said.
“Almost everyone I’ve spoken to about the NBN agrees that the Federal Government should have invested in a quality and reliable fibre to the premises model not this current half-baked model,” she said.
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