Horsley residents worried about the future of the National Broadband Network in their suburb have met federal opposition members to plead for a better internet connection.
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At yesterday’s meeting on Bong Bong Road, opposition communications spokesman Jason Clare said locals had been ‘‘left in limbo’’ after the Coalition was elected to government and introduced its own NBN policy.
‘‘Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull have pulled the plug on homes and businesses right across the Illawarra that were expecting to receive fibre to the home,’’ he said.
‘‘They were going to get fibre to the home but now they’re going to get fibre to the street corner.’’
Member for Throsby Stephen Jones and Member for Cunningham Sharon Bird, were also present to listen to concerns from residents.
David Kastelein said the broadband connection in the area was so poor his daughter often struggled to study online at home between 3pm and 9pm, the peak broadband demand period.
‘‘In the evening the service becomes slow, sometimes it drops out then kicks back in,’’ he said.
‘‘And other times it will just keep dropping out and then we’re waiting to reconnect.’’
Mr Kastelein, who works as a maintenance planner, said he would have more opportunity to work from home if he could access better internet.
Residents in the area had investigated getting ADSL connections but had been told the necessary infrastructure didn’t exist, Mr Kastelein said.
‘‘It really has an impact,’’ he said.
‘‘These services should be available to people no matter where they live.’’
An NBN Co spokesman said it was still the government’s intention to ‘‘ensure that every family can access better broadband’’.
‘‘We’re conducting a review at the moment to see how this can be done sooner, more affordably and more cost-effectively,’’ he said.
‘‘In the meantime, the NBN rollout continues in the Illawarra.’’
The spokesman said NBN Co had issued build instructions to contractors for nearly 13,000 homes and businesses in the region, including 3000 in Wollongong, 2700 in Corrimal and 7100 in Dapto.
On Thursday, the Mercury revealed 40 Thiess NBN contractors had lost their jobs.
The spokesman said employment of contractors was in the hands of the company and ‘‘every home and business in the Illawarra – and across Australia – will get the NBN’’.
But Mr Clare disputed this, laying the blame squarely at the government’s feet.
‘‘[Minister for Communications] Malcolm Turnbull says one thing and does another. He pledged to protect these exact jobs that have been lost,’’ Mr Clare said.
However, a spokesman for Mr Turnbull said Labor had misled voters.
‘‘The Labor government created a metric called ‘premises where construction is commenced or completed’ to create the impression that there was much more activity than was in fact the case,’’ he said.
‘‘Only a careful scrutiny of the footnoted definition would reveal that ‘construction’ was deemed ‘to have commenced’ from the moment the first high-level desktop designs were commenced.’’
