NBN: Labor accuse network of ‘dumping’ customers onto Satellite

The company in charge of the NBN is celebrating a connection milestone as it’s accused of “dumping” thousands of customers.

Shadow communications minister Michelle Rowland has accused the company in charge of building the national broadband network (NBN) of “dumping” users on to satellite connections in order to meet rollout targets.

NBN Co is supposed to finish its rollout by the end of the month, which it has repeatedly said it is on track to do.

On Thursday, the corporation announced 100,000 people had now connected to the satellite internet provided by its two Sky Muster satellites.

The satellites are designed to deliver speeds of at least 25mbps to regional, rural and remote areas that can’t connect to the fixed line network.

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The Ariane 5 rocket lifts off, carrying NBN’s Sky Muster satellite. Picture: AFP

But while NBN celebrates the connection milestone, Ms Rowland has used a report obtained under Freedom of Information to accuse NBN Co of suddenly dumping 20,000 additional customers onto the satellite service.

The satellite service is the slowest of the lot, and often comes with restrictive data caps.

A 2015 NBN Co report titled Sky Muster™ Satellite Update lists 410,000 premises in the footprint of the network, and predicts 240,000 will connect to it.

At the time only 76,000 had.

Five years later it’s only just this week passed 100,000.

But the amount of premises that will be available to connect to it has grown by an almost identical amount.

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The satellite was named by students of a distance-education program.

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The 410,000 ready to connect goal from 2015 was hit in March of this year.

But between March 5 and May 28, an additional 20,000 premises were added.

“It is not in the interests of regional Australia to have households and businesses unnecessarily taken off fixed NBN technology and shifted to satellite”, Ms Rowland said.

“If this is a dumping exercise driven by short-term political objectives, I’d be very concerned. This is not how the NBN satellite was intended to be used.”

“Our planning for broadband needs to be long-term. This is a serious quality of life issue and the Government must explain if technology shifting has occurred.”

Fixed wireless NBN relies on towers like this one, but NBN Co can’t just put them wherever they want. Picture: Alison Wynd

In response, a spokesperson for NBN Co told news.com.au some changes had been made but they weren’t driven by “short-term political objectives” as Ms Rowland accused.

“NBN Co has made some changes to the access technologies that are being deployed to deliver NBN services to approximately 42,000 of the 11.5 million premises in the initial volume network build,” the NBN spokesperson said.

And more than half of them will actually be moved onto a better service.

NBN Co said the reason for the changes is because it wasn’t able to secure suitable sites for Fixed Wireless technology in some areas, for a variety of reasons.

These included planning approvals, landholder agreements and community objections.

22,000 premises originally earmarked for Fixed Wireless will instead receive superior fixed line connections, while 20,000 will move to Satellite.

The spokesperson also denied it had tried to get away with making the change in secret.

“NBN Co has communicated these changes to internet retailers and has updated its website and maps to reflect the changes to access technologies for affected premises,” the spokesperson said.