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ACT homes and businesses abandoned in NBN upgrades

New analysis of NBN Co’s rollout of Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) home and business upgrades over the past two years shows that once again the ACT is being overlooked by the federal government.

The ACT has had the fewest number of suburbs added to the rollout of any state or territory. 

Of 700 suburbs nationally added to the list of 1.78 million homes and businesses eligible to upgrade to the significantly faster and more reliable FTTP connection, only ten suburbs in the ACT have been included.

NBN Co has announced the upgrades in eight tranches since October 2020, but the ACT has only been included in one of these.

Community-endorsed Independent ACT Senate candidate David Pocock said it simply wasn’t good enough for the nation’s capital to keep getting overlooked.

“Once again the ACT has come in dead last on the list when it comes to federal investment in critical infrastructure,” David says.

“The pandemic has highlighted how absolutely vital fast and reliable digital connectivity is for all of us, especially when it comes to remote learning, maintaining social connection and of course business, especially working from home. 

“Here in the ACT we keep missing out like this and it begs the question, what has our federal government representative been doing for the past few years? 

“Why hasn’t Senator Seselja gone into bat for the community that elected him?

“Faster, more reliable internet connections will improve productivity and make it easier for Canberra businesses to succeed and prosper and that’s what I will go in and fight for.”

While there are challenges upgrading connections for some of Australia’s regional and remote communities, David argues that should not be an excuse in the national capital.

“There’s a whole section of the suburb of Casey that missed out on NBN altogether and the community there has been crying out for help to fix this issue since 2018. 

“We see this same scenario playing out down in Tuggeranong as well. Some residents in Gleneagles Estate got so desperate they banded together and lobbied NBN Co over five years, leveraging group buying power in order to get an FTTP connection. 

“These are the lengths people in our community are going to and it shouldn’t be this way.

“It’s widely known that we have arguably the worst internet of any capital city and there’s been no move to change that. I’m putting whoever wins the next election on notice that getting Canberrans access to better internet will be on my priority list.”

 

Date announced 

Number of Homes and Businesses eligible to upgrade to FTTP

Breakdown per state and territory 

 

 

NSW

VIC

QLD

SA

WA

NT

TAS

ACT

ALL

5/4/22

90000

21

13

6

2

4

0

0

0

46

28/3/22

40000

0

50

0

0

0

0

0

0

50

22/3/22

50000

30

12

7

21

9

0

0

0

79

8/11/21

200000

21

20

11

3

17

0

0

0

72

Aug-21

300000

45

21

22

7

24

0

0

0

119

May-21

900000

73

41

75

15

51

12

11

10

288

Feb-21

100000

9

4

7

4

5

0

0

0

29

Oct-20

100000

8

2

4

1

2

0

0

0

17

 

Totals 

1,780,000

207

163

132

53

112

12

11

10

700

 

Data compiled based on information available on NBN Co’s website at https://www.nbnco.com.au/corporate-information/media-centre 

 

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