Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If you're waiting for NBN in parts of the Blue Mountains and Hawkesbury, you'd be forgiven for thinking that time has stood still or at least gone to slow motion as we watch the glacial pace at which NBN is rolling out. In the Lower Blue Mountains most people will eventually get FTTC, but the Hawkesbury is a technological mess, with satellite, wireless, FTTN, FTTC and FTTP for those lucky early receivers.

The boundary problems we're seeing between what NBN will service with fixed line and wireless are exasperating. Some houses will miss out on a fixed line because of the rigidity of the boundaries that NBN Co is using. At one home you have FTTC while the neighbour has to make do with wireless. You can only wonder that someone hasn't even bothered to look on Google Earth, let alone gone anywhere near the place in person.

Because NBN is under pressure to put cost and speed ahead of quality in the rollout, we're seeing aerial fibre cabling being strung up along Telstra wires when, in a bushfire-prone area like ours, underground would have made much more sense. I don't have confidence that NBN Co will do a better job of vegetation management than Telstra has with its aerial copper lines, or than our power companies have done, for that matter.

There are also the forgotten homes in Wentworth Falls, in Bullaburra and now in the lower mountains as the need for speed trumps all else. It's a poor service and will not deliver what my community needs.