Varsity Lakes and Southport to wait at least a year for high-speed internet

THEY have been described as the Coast’s technology hubs but residents in Varsity Lakes and Southport may have to wait a little longer before they can join the area’s future internet wonderland.

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THEY have been described as the Coast’s technology hubs but residents in Varsity Lakes and Southport may have to wait a little longer before they can join the area’s future internet wonderland.

And even then residents, particularly any in some of the Coast’s newer estates, may be wondering when the world wide web might be making a detour to their door.

According to a table supplied by the National Broadband Network, residents in Varsity Lakes, Robina and Southport will be waiting for at least a year before the high-speed internet provider is rolled out in their areas.

Despite being touted as tech hubs, with Southport now the city’s official CBD and Robina considered the de facto CBD, internet access in both areas is patchy.

And while high-speed relief will come with the NBN rollout until then experts are saying residents will just have to live with limited access to the web.

Teacher Graeme Clancy might be doing his third degree but a combination of lack of internet access and the fact his Griffith University graduate diploma has to be completed online means he has to head to his parents’ Currumbin home to study.

“We live in a complex near the Easy T centre on Scottsdale Dr and we can’t get internet access there,’ he said.

“If I use my phone’s internet hotspot I can get it but I can’t get it from a provider.”

He said while his parents were happy for him to use their internet, he was frustrated.

“They don’t mind too much,” he said.

“But I’m forced to head there because all the council libraries where I could access the internet close at 5pm and, given I’m doing an online course, that’s the time when I start studying.”

Founder of the Varsity Lakes internet service provider On the Net Tak Woo said the problem with the suburb, and many of the Coast’s newer developments, was the way in which phone lines were laid out when the suburbs were developed.

“Like a lot of the newer developments on the Coast, Varsity Lakes doesn’t have copper lines back to the exchange,” he said.

“Instead the lines go through booster boxes on the sides of the street and when it comes to broadband internet they have capacity constraints.”

And while proponents of the NBN are adamant that its rollout will solve internet access problems, Mr Woo had his doubts.

“In some areas it will solve all the problems, but other parts of Varsity Lakes are wired up on private fibre systems so there will be a question of whether they get it or not.”