Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

On 1 March I announced an equity injection for NBN Tasmania of $100 million to support the rollout to stage 2 communities and to new 90,000 stage 3 premises in Hobart, Launceston, Burnie and Devonport. In all, the three stages announced so far will provide 100,000 Tasmanian premises with superfast fibre optic services. The full statewide rollout will cover 200,000 homes, businesses, schools and hospitals in Tasmania and deliver speeds of 100 megs per second. The network operations centre, where NBN Tasmania engineers can monitor the network, is nearing completion. On the mainland, construction has commenced on the 6,000 kilometres of fibre backbone links that will connect 100 regional locations across six states and territories and benefit about 395,000 regional residents and businesses. Last Tuesday came the welcome news that NBN Co. had selected five first-release sites where it will test the network’s design and construction methods, which will provide crucial information to assist in the rollout of the NBN. So the first five mainland releases were last week. (Time expired)