Scott Morrison’s copper-based National Broadband Network is acting as a hand brake on national productivity and making it more difficult for Australians to work from home during the coronavirus pandemic.
The latest figures from the Speedtest Global Index show Australia’s broadband internet speeds now rank 60th in the world behind Moldova, Bulgaria, Belarus and New Zealand.
The Index listed Australia’s average broadband speed as 60.54 megabits per second in November, similar to speeds in Ukraine and Vietnam. The global leader was Singapore, with 241 megabits per second – four times faster than Australia.
Labor Leader Anthony Albanese said Scott Morrison should be ashamed of these figures.
“Today I will visit the electorate of Macquarie with local MP Susan Templeman, where hundreds of residents’ NBN connector boxes have failed in recent storms,’’ Mr Albanese said.
“Poor mobile phone coverage in the Blue Mountains and the Hawkesbury means some residents have been left without phone or internet for days or even weeks.
“Some people have lost up to six boxes in a row. They’ve started asking for a spare.’’
Ms Templeman said: “This makes it pretty much impossible for people to work from home or run a small business.
“It’s also dangerous during the bushfire season.’’
When the Government came to office, it replaced the former Labor Government’s plan for an NBN delivering fibre to the premises with a second-rate copper wire-based system that was out of date before it was even constructed.
In September, the Government finally admitted its error and committed $6 billion to bring the NBN into the 21st century, reverting to Labor’s initial plan.
This brings the cost of the NBN to $57 billion – nearly $30 billion more than what the Coalition promised their second-rate NBN would cost in 2013.
It has also been reported up to 238,000 NBN connections are still incapable delivering basic 25 megabit per second speeds, despite the Liberals promising everyone would have these minimum NBN speeds by 2016, and these speeds also being a requirement of Australian law.
Scott Morrison’s incompetence and mismanagement on communications is holding back business growth, particularly in regional Australia.
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