Is Yass last to get NBN?

OPINION: I am an optimist. And it is because of this that every day when I log on to my computer I go to speedtest.net and check what speed my connection is running today.

At home, this is somewhere south of 10Mbps, which is better than many other places in the Yass Valley.

One of the features of the site is that you can chart your speed over time. Mine used to be more than 14Mbps but then a lightning strike on the phone lines changed that for the worse.

The site also compares your speed with the global broadband speed average that is currently 23Mbps. I look at that line, so far above the one that shows my own connection speed, and wonder why it is so bad?

The National Broadband Network (NBN) is meant to be the cure for poor internet speeds.

The current version of the NBN is working with a mix of technologies that either retains the copper wire connection to the home or use fixed wireless technology, and that will see most homes achieve about 50Mbps.

For us in Yass, the continued use of the copper wire infrastructure is a problem because of the ongoing problems with the quality of the copper in the district, and which might mean much lower connection speeds than advertised.

This is, of course, at a time when Google Fibre is already delivering 1000Mbps in parts of the United States.

The latest, unofficial, claim is that the NBN will eventually be available in Yass sometime towards the end of 2016.

The reasons for this tardiness are at least partly technical. NBN Co has chosen to connect us via Wagga and thus the NBN will become available in Binalong before Bowning and, eventually, Yass itself.

Unfortunately it seems that Yass will be the last major town in the Hume electorate to receive the NBN, and that the whole of the Hume electorate has been low in the priority list for access to the NBN.

I should note that in a media release dated May 4 2015, the Federal Member for Hume, Mr Angus Taylor MP states, “Hume has done particularly well, in terms of prioritisation. The average rollout per electorate is 4,000 premises, so Hume has done very well indeed”.

I would beg to differ with Mr Taylor in that prioritisation is actually a function of how quickly people get access to the service … and the answer for Hume (and the Yass Valley in particular) has been not very fast at all!

Access to fast internet is an increasingly important requirement for high value economic development and it is disappointing that we in the Yass Valley are being left, once again, at the bottom of the barrel in terms of government priorities.

* Views expressed are Alex Tewes’ own and not necessarily representative of Scoop Yass Valley.