South Morang residents previously flagged to be hooked up to the National Broadband Network’s fibre-to-the-premises service are no longer guaranteed a connection despite a call by the provider to residents and business owners to make the switch.
On October 29, NBN Co changed its online rollout maps showing colour-coded parts of South Morang scheduled to be serviced by fibre.
The maps were previously overlayed with orange or purple colours. Orange denoted fibre covering areas where construction had started, and the purple showed areas where a broadband service was already available.
Overnight, the orange overlays were removed and partially replaced with brown, which represented areas with a ‘fixed line’ where construction had started.
One area previously covered in orange – officially coded 3SMR-08, which includes about 2400 residences between and near Quarry and Granite Hills parks – is no longer coloured, casting doubts on whether these houses will ever receive a super-fast internet connection.
An NBN Co spokeswoman said last week the federal government had asked the network builder to only publish maps online showing areas where ‘‘boots’’ were on the ground. “The new maps [on the website] are an accurate picture of the state of the rollout as it stands today,” she said.
NBN Co’s Trent Williams said more than one-third of South Morang premises had made the switch to NBN. He urged others to ‘‘follow their lead’’.
Scullin MP Andrew Giles said: “The Coalition went to the last election promising a fibre-to-the-node broadband policy. Since they have been elected, they have removed 2400 premises in South Morang from the rollout maps.
“Unless the Coalition can tell us when those 2400 premises will receive fibre-to-the-premises NBN, we can only assume they will not get it.”
Mr Giles spoke in Federal Parliament on November 20 about the importance of NBN Co’s broadband connection for small business.
“That is why I was so disturbed the other day to observe that 2400 premises in South Morang have been removed from the fibre-to-the-premises rollout of the NBN.”
