Towns miss out on internet
Richard Powell: the Meeniyan web designer argues that his town would miss out on a vital infrastructure project if it did not get direct connection to the NBN.
SMALL South Gippsland towns will be denied direct access to the NBN information superhighway, even though the infrastructure will run straight through them.
Meeniyan is but one example. But the gap between the NBN haves and have nots may become even more pronounced further south. The Star believes (though the paper is still waiting for an answer from NBN Co Limited) that the network’s fibre cable will not be laid between Toora and Yarram.
“The rule of thumb is that a township or city that has over 1000 people will get the fibre. There’s the fibre, which will go to 93 per cent of the country and that’s for places with more than 1000 residents,” general manager external communications at NBN Co Limited Andrew Sholl said.
“Then there’s the last seven per cent – the more remote areas, the smaller places, outside Leongatha, the boondocks – that will get fixed wireless or if they’re really remote, outback places, they’ll get satellite.
“But even those are better than what most people get today.”
But DCSI owner Mark McKibbin disagrees.
“Meeniyan’s going to get a second-rate service, essentially, if they can’t get fibre. But that’s rural Australia,” the internet service provider boss said.
“I can’t understand why they won’t do a town. I can understand why they don’t want to do the outlying farms and other places. That’s big money. But the towns where you’ve got a reasonable concentration of people should get fibre.”
Lyall Johnson, senior media advisor to Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy Stephen Conroy, said areas “outside the fibre footprint” would “still be provided with vastly improved broadband services through next-generation wireless or satellite technologies that will deliver speeds of up to 12 megabits per second, many times faster than what is often now delivered in metropolitan areas”.
But Mr McKibbin remains sceptical.
“There’ll be a lot of people who won’t be able to get wireless either, because it’s just a line-of-sight product. The government’s acting like if they draw a big circle around where they put the antenna, the coverage will get there,” he said. “But it’s just like mobile in the hills. There’ll be places where it doesn’t work. There’ll be people who’re falling back on satellite, which is pretty ordinary anyway.
“The trouble is the government is acting like wireless is just as good, but it cannot supply the sort of video content people want. With fibre you’ll be able to say ‘I want to watch this movie’ and you’ll have it. With wireless you won’t get a big band-width, because it’s a shared pool.”
Meeniyan resident and website designer Richard Powell believes the town will receive a better service, but it won’t be as good as it could be.
“In the plans Leongatha and Foster get fibre to the home and we get distribution through the wireless network. The main people who may miss out will be the businesses. If you’ve got a business you need high speed communications,” he said.
“If you’ve got online retailing, you want to set up a publishing business, or anything like that, it relies on high speed broadband. What small towns are trying to do is attract people to the area.
“Communications is part of the infrastructure. If you’ve followed the revolution in online retailing, you’ll know how important that is.”
Mr Powell said Meeniyan’s relegation to the wireless network was “not a very
satisfactory result”.
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