Joint with Josh Wilson MP, Deputy Chair Joint Standing Committee on the NBN.

Evidence submitted to the NBN Joint Standing Committee has revealed the multi-technology mix will fail to meet the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison Government’s own national NBN speed quality mandate in 5 out of 8 States and Territories.

According to NBNCo, the rollouts in Western Australia, Tasmania, Queensland, South Australia and the ACT will not meet the national quality benchmark of 90 per cent of premises being able to achieve 50 Mbps speeds in the fixed line footprint .

Furthermore, these sub-par levels are based on network performance in the year 2022 – not 2020 when the rollout is forecast to be complete.

This comes after Labor repeatedly warned Communications Minister Mitch Fifield that Fibre to the Curb levels were inadequate, particularly in Western Australia, which is now the State with the slowest fixed-line speeds.

Rather than taking action, the Minister irresponsibly increased the Fibre to the Node footprint by 100,000 premises in the 2019 NBN Corporate Plan as cost and time blowouts on his bungled HFC network began to bite.

It is astonishing that despite a $21.4 billion cost blowout, and rollout delay of four years, the Liberals’ can’t even meet their own low-ball speed mandate in 5 out of 8 States and Territories.

Under the original fibre plan, the entire fixed line footprint in every State and Territory could achieve speeds of 1000 Mbps.

Under the Liberals, not even 90 per cent of the fixed-footprint can achieve 50 Mbps.