Chief Engineer Concedes Malcolm Turnbull’s Second-Rate NBN Already Needs Upgrading

20/07/2017

Peter Khalil, the Federal Member for Wills, has highlighted the relevance of today’s admission by NBNCo. that the Abbott-Turnbull Government’s second-rate NBN rollout will already require expensive upgrades in order to meet Australia’s needs into the future.

According to recent reports, NBNCo. disclosed that it has already started planning upgrades to the network, which has yet to even reach many homes and businesses in Mr Khalil’s electorate of Wills.

This admission by the Chief NBN Engineer is a damning indictment of Malcolm Turnbull’s second-rate rollout, which is leaving households and business stranded on obsolete copper infrastructure.

Evidently the Turnbull Government was unhappy about this disclosure, because when the Chief Engineer was subsequently asked by a journalist:

“so why not just build the NBN once rather than building something that needs to be upgraded in a few years at extra cost”

The Communications Minister pounced in front of the camera to prevent the question from being answered. There was clearly something the Turnbull Government did not want the Australian public to hear.

The so-called “multi technology mix” style network will be rolled out to the vast majority of Mr Khalil’s constituents in Wills, with only residents south of Stewart Street in Brunswick having received the world-class FTTP NBN under the previous Labor Government.

“I’ve seen some of the staggeringly poor quality internet speeds that my constituents are coping with. It is extremely worrying that even once this second-rate rollout reaches them, it may already be obsolete,” said Mr Khalil.

“Malcolm Turnbull has turned Australia’s biggest digital infrastructure project into a digital nightmare, with billions of taxpayer dollars being wasted on second-rate copper that already needs upgrading. Our community deserves better and Australia deserves better.”

Mr Khalil will be holding an NBN policy forum with Shadow Minister for Communications, the Hon. Michelle Rowland, at the Coburg RSL on July 26th at 6:00pm.