The Federal Parliament’s NBN Oversight Committee is holding an inquiry into the rollout of the NBN across rural and regional Australia and will accept submissions from residents, businesses and consumer advocacy groups until Thursday, March 29.

Wagga woman Jenny Chobdzynski encouraged people to come forward with their stories, saying it took her more than three months – and a story in The Daily Advertiser – to get her NBN problems resolved.

“After the story in the paper someone from the NBN office called me within a week and then everything worked perfectly,” she said. “But I know people who are still having problems with their connections and now we just say it might take three months to sort it out. I’m reasonably healthy and I could go to the library if I needed the internet, but if someone’s not well or isolated then it’s really unacceptable.”

The federal opposition has used the inquiry as a chance to take shots at the government, accusing it of failing to address what it called “systemic faults”.

Stephen Jones, Shadow Minister for Regional Communications, said regional Australia had been left stranded by a “second-rate copper NBN on slower speeds and poor service”.

“Australians deserve a real broadband network that delivers the speeds and reliability they need for their business, education and a truly digitally-enabled society,” he said. “This is a chance for regional Australia to have their say and tell (Malcolm) Turnbull and the Liberal-Nationals that their second-rate NBN is simply not good enough.”

By July, an estimated 8.7 million premises will be connected to the NBN – up from Labor’s fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) plan that would have seen 7.5 million connections. However, FTTP is faster, delivering speeds of 100Mbps, while the government’s mix of copper-based and wireless broadband connections struggles to achieve those speeds.

While Labor was content to politicise the issue, Riverina leaders were more pragmatic about the massive infrastructure program.

Greater Hume Shire mayor Heather Wilton said the network certainly wasn’t perfect, but believed it would get better over time.

“Some of our rural ratepayers have problems (with the NBN), they get almost nothing,” she said. “There’s no mobile reception, the residential landline is OK as long as it doesn’t drop out and the TV networks are ordinary. But the people out of town who connect to the satellite think it’s fantastic, but they pay for that good service.”

Lockhart Shire general manager Peter Veneris said both The Rock and Lockhart were connected to the NBN, but there was more scope for improvement.

“The NBN is a great advantage and opens up all sorts of opportunities, as well as attracting new residents to the shire, but there’s still an issue outside of those towns,” he said. “In rural areas of the shire where people use the satellite NBN connection there are still download speed issues and those kinds of things. Whilst we’re predominantly a rural-based area it’s important those farms and agri-businesses have reliable and fast internet.”

Find out more about the inquiry at bit.ly/NBNinquiry.

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