Revealed: Logan labelled worst internet black spot after damning report
One of the state’s largest cities has admitted it has the worst internet connections in the southeast after a damning report and an EFTPOS fail at a new shopping centre. Now, the cost of fixing the issue has been revealed.
Logan
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One of the state’s largest cities has admitted it has the worst internet connections in the southeast.
Logan City Council received a fail mark in a report about its online connectivity, by IT expert Grex Consulting.
The dismal report rated Logan behind the Gold Coast and Brisbane and recommended the council carry out research and draft a business case to fix the problem.
High internet dropout rates, slow speeds and whopping connection costs in some suburbs were costing the city as businesses packed up and left.
The revelations were nothing new to Underwood online training giant Go1, forced to pay $40,000 four years ago to buy its own high-speed internet connection or move out of Logan.
But it was the telling tale of a new shopping centre at Flagstone, in which the Wi-Fi connection was so poor the EFTPOS machines did not work, which added sway to calls for the council to pay $200,000 to draw up its plan of attack for better internet.
Despite claims by mayor Darren Power that the city’s internet infrastructure was adequate, the council decided to spend the money on an overarching business case.
The document, which would point out the city’s internet black spots, would be used to tap state and federal governments for money to fix the problem.
Logan Innovation director Dr Scott Bourke said the NBN in parts of the city was inadequate and businesses were already demanding speeds of up to 10 Gigabits per second, 100 times faster than 100 Mega bits per second the national broadband network offered.
He said the number one complaint from businesses was the lack of reliable, quality internet connection and said a business case would tie in with state government plans to focus and invest in regional areas.
“What Grex consulting found … was that without substantial investment in digital infrastructure, the city will lag behind its metropolitan region counterparts of Brisbane and the Gold Coast,” Dr Bourke said.
“It also found that the level of investment to lift the quality of the service across the city for both business and consumers … was somewhere in the range of $40 million to $60 million over 10 years.”
The full Grex report is yet to be made public.
Go1 co-founder Vu Tran said the problem would only get worse if Logan failed to act now.
He said COVID-19 had put more pressure on the network and expected that demand to grow as schools adopted more online courses and more people opted to work from home.
“It’s amazing that in Underwood and places such as Marsden the internet coverage is so poor, which means there is a growing gap between the Haves and Have Nots,” Mr Tran said.
“Real estate and property values suffer in places where there is no internet and pity the poor shop owners in Flagstone where the EFTPOS doesn’t work.
“It really is a right of residents to have proper connectivity and although $200,000 sounds like a lot of money for a business case, if it fixes the problem and achieves fairness of access, it will be money well spent.”
Federal MP for Forde Bert van Manen said the investment would result in more business and jobs for locals.
“As of today, 98 per cent of premises are ready for service in Forde, 99 per cent in Wright and all of Rankin,” he said.
“Labor’s NBN would have cost an extra $30 billion and pushed up prices for businesses and residential users.”