NBN WILL BE REBUILT FOR 10 MILLION WHILE
PARRAMATTA WAITS TO BE CONNECTED
While Parramatta, Rosehill, Merrylands and Granville are still waiting for the NBN, the
Morrison Government has announced it will spend $4.5 to rebuild the NBN with fibre
for 10 million homes and businesses that are already connected.
This announcement comes:
. Seven years after government rejected Labor’s plan to rollout the NBN with fibre to the premises;
. Four years after Parramatta was first promised the NBN; and
. Months after Communications Minister Paul Fletcher said the NBN rollout was finished.
The Parramatta CBD and Rosehill will be the last places in Australia to be connected
to the NBN in March 2022, while Granville and Merrylands are waiting to be connected
at the end of this year.
Meanwhile, many local homes and businesses that have been connected are
struggling with slow connection speeds on a second-rate network that is largely reliant
on ancient copper infrastructure.
Coronavirus has made us more reliant on fast, reliable internet than ever before. We
need it to work from home, shop and keep our businesses running. And it will be
essential to creating new jobs for the thousands of people in Parramatta who’ve lost
work since the crisis began.
Unfortunately it has taken the government seven years and $51 billion to work out that
fibre was better all along.
We don’t need to rebuild the NBN in Parramatta. We need to get it right the first time.
I’m calling on the government to:
. Connect Parramatta to the NBN now with fibre.
. Ensure fibre upgrades do not worsen the digital divide by excluding households
that cannot afford $149 per month plans required to connect to the NBN with fibre.
Wednesday, 23 September 2020
