FASTER internet will be slower to arrive in Frankston with the national broadband network rollout to many homes and businesses delayed until 2019.
In October 2015, the federal Coalition government announced “all premises in Dunkley” were “on track” to be connected to the network “by the end of 2017” amid much fanfare and a visit to Frankston South by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, then federal communications minister.
Late last year, NBN Co — the federal government-owned company tasked with building the faster internet network — quietly pushed out its deadline to roll out the infrastructure in Frankston to “the first half of 2019”, two years later than originally planned.
Frankston mayor Cr Brian Cunial said council is disappointed that “most of our municipality” will not have access to higher-speed broadband until 2019 “despite the federal government’s promise of the NBN rollout by 2017”.
“With Frankston designated as one of Melbourne’s Metropolitan Activity Centres, many businesses and developers have chosen to invest in our City based on its status and the anticipated NBN rollout. The delay in the rollout now puts at risk economic and jobs growth in our region,” Cr Cunial said.
“Council urges the federal government to review its construction plan and to prioritise Frankston City to ensure that our local business communities remain competitive.”
Federal Dunkley Liberal MP Chris Crewther defended the delay, saying many homes in the Frankston, Seaford, Frankston North and Frankston South areas will now receive “better technology” when the network arrives in those suburbs.
“NBN announced in late September the introduction of a new technology, Fibre-to-the-Distribution, which will connect up to 700,000 premises – including premises in our local area which are currently served by the Optus cable TV network,” Mr Crewther said.
“As a result of this upgrade, commencement of NBN construction in some areas is likely to be rescheduled to 2018.
“Homes and businesses in these areas will continue to have access to existing cable broadband and ADSL2+ services where they are available today until the NBN is rolled out.”
Federal Isaacs Labor MP Mark Dreyfus accused the federal government of “bungling” the national infrastructure project.
“In 2013 Mr Turnbull said that all Australian homes would have the NBN by 2016. This didn’t happen, but in that time Australia’s broadband speeds dropped from 30th in the world to 60th.
“The Liberals simply have no credibility when it comes to the NBN. They have delayed and downgraded the project at every step and Frankston residents have missed out because of the Turnbull government’s incompetence. This is simply not good enough.
“Frankston residents deserves better than this federal government.”
In 2015, then Dunkley Liberal MP Bruce Billson, Mr Crewther’s predecessor, issued a statement saying he was pleased the rollout “continued to speed up”.
“The Coalition government is able to deliver the NBN far quicker and cheaper than the previous Labor government by making use of a range of technologies. This includes the existing copper and cable infrastructure already provided into homes and businesses.”
Before the 2013 federal election, then opposition leader Tony Abbott said the NBN could be built, delivering speeds five times quicker than existing broadband services, at a cost of $29.5 billion using a “multi-technology mix” against Labor’s then pledge to spend $44.1 billion of taxpayers’ money building a fibre-to-the-premises network.
The cost of the Coalition’s NBN plan has blown out to “up to” $56 billion and Mr Abbott and then communication minister Mr Turnbull’s, before the 2013 election, said the network would be completely built by 2016.
NBN Co spokesman Russell Kelly said “there has been enormous progress over recent years” in rolling out faster internet services “to 2.6 million homes since 2015 alone”.
“Timeframes are always estimates and subject to change,” Mr Kelly said in a statement.
“In the case of Frankston, NBN Co recently announced that some HFC areas would be moving to delivery via Fibre to the Curb. This has altered construction timelines for some communities and that has been reflected on our website.
“The feedback we have received is that customers are most interested in when the NBN will be available, rather than the type of technology to be used.
“The previous data available focused on construction start – whereas the data now available provides the estimated date when service will be available.”
2 Comments
Everything the liberal government says about this are weasel words and lies. They have destroyed what was a visionary project that would have served us for decades to come. They have instead purposefully destroyed a piece of National infrastructure and replaced it with a pile of out dated junk that is already out of date, slower and more expensive then the original plan. The MTM is now actually far more expensive to rollout , more expensive to maintain, far far slower with no future upgrade path and is taking longer to rollout. This is a scam and a tragedy of epic proportions!
It’s exceptionally unfortunate.
at the start of 2013 I had to stop work due to becoming disabled and I thought FTTP might allow me (currently getting about a fifth of my possible ADSL speeds) to figure out an enterprise from home or to do volunteer contributions to my old educational institution via HD video connection.
I shifted the goalposts of my expectations many times and was pleased that at least we would get FTTN (still mostly copper, tiny fraction of FTTP speeds) in early 2017.
I was thrilled to hear that in exchange for a delay to late 2017 we would get FTTC ( quite comparable to FTTP, several times faster than FTTN) only to see now that we have been deleted from the rollout map for now.
I can only imagine that had Labor continued in Gov since 2013 FTTP would have become simpler to install with so many techs trained for it all over the country and that this would have lowered the bill and sped things up so the Coalition appear to have succeeded 100% in one area, they tainted a project that in the long term would have been an excellent legacy for Labor.
as it stands I have too poor uploads to use cloud services properly and cannot HD conference so being house bound with disability is neither fun nor entertaining but I will try to keep a positive outlook and hope that some advocate for Frankston can get my region (Frankston South bordering Baxter) back on the map shortly