‘You won’t believe this’: NBN Co delivers after $750m upgrade flop

The government-owned telco has connected a former Nationals senator to its new fixed wireless network after The Australian revealed it had bumped him more than a dozen times. But more Aussies have come forward with service woes.

Former Nationals senator John Williams.

NBN Co has finally connected former Nationals senator John Williams to its new fast fixed wireless network – a day after The Australian revealed the government-owned telco had bumped him more than a dozen times.

Mr Williams’ experience of having his connection repeatedly cancelled and rescheduled came as new figures revealed that NBN’s $750m upgrade of its wireless network had so far yielded only 100 customers – costing about $7.5m a connection.

An NBN spokeswoman said the telco aimed to connect homes and businesses to its services as “quickly as possible”.

NBN contractors had told Mr Williams he would be connected on March 31, but expedited his request after The Australian published his story, which has prompted other people to come forward, revealing their own NBN woes.

“You won’t believe this,” Mr Williams told The Australian on Monday afternoon. “They’ll be here tomorrow morning”.

On Tuesday, he sent a one-word message to The Australian: “connected”.

The poor uptake of the wireless upgrade has sparked a war of words between the federal government and opposition, with future funding of the NBN becoming an election issue. Anthony Albanese poured another $3bn into the telco, which is $26bn in debt, in January.

Communications Minister Michelle Rowland has accused Liberal leader Peter Dutton of wanting to privatise the NBN and returning to “Abbott-era ideology and policy idiocy”.

Communications Minister Michelle Rowland says the coalition has launched an ‘unprecedented attack’ on NBN Co. Picture: Martin Ollman/NewsWire

Opposition Communications spokeswoman Melissa McIntosh said the coalition had no plans to sell the NBN, if elected, accusing Labor of being “desperate for fake and attention seeking headlines as they limp to the polls”.

Other Australians have since contacted The Australian, expressing frustration with the government-owned NBN, which is a wholesaler, selling its services to commercial telcos such as Telstra, Optus, TPG and others.

One man, who didn’t want his name published out of fear of being put on an “NBN blacklist”, said the telco has also had his connection repeatedly cancelled and rescheduled.

He said it was made more complicated given he was forced to communicate via Telstra rather than NBN Co directly.

“The NBN promotional material emphasises what a simple job it is to upgrade. It certainly hasn’t been for us,” the man said.

“To make it even more frustrating, we can’t communicate direct with NBN, we have to work through Telstra, which makes it complicated, and protects NBN from the complaints they would certainly get, if our experience is typical.

“We had an appointment for connection on Friday, February 7 between 1pm and 5pm. We arranged for someone to be home. No-one from NBN turned up, and we heard nothing until the next day when Telstra advised ‘that NBN were short of technicians, and we would have to reschedule’.

NBN CO Ellie Sweeney replaced Stephen Rue late last year. Picture: Martin Ollman/NewsWire

The man said his job was rescheduled to February 28 between 8am and 12pm, but NBN failed to complete the connection.

“The NBN technician arrived but would not do the job because he would need to get down on his hands and knees to access some areas, which he said ‘he is not paid to do’.

“Our electrician, who has recently worked in the house, couldn’t believe it. We have now hired him to do the wiring, so NBN can make a third appointment to hook it up.”

Another man from the Southern Tablelands of NSW said he found an NBN contractor to be very efficient.

“About two years ago, a big lightning strike at the end of our street – fried just about every NBN box in our street. We organised for an (NBN) tech guy to come out from Canberra, about a 150km return trip, to repair or replace our NBN box,” the man said.

“He told us that despite only being instructed to just fix our problem, he on his own bat decided to do all the households on our street. He also told me that the first batches of NBN boxes had a cheap, small but critical component … that was very vulnerable to quite small power spikes, and he’d replaced heaps of them in the past year.”

NBN embarked on a series of redundancy rounds, including axing about 10 per cent of its workforce last year, as growth slows, and it faces increasing competition from Elon Musk’s satellite service Starlink.

Mr Williams, who once sat on a Senate committee overseeing the NBN, said there were “not enough people on the job”.

An NBN spokeswoman said: “the most appropriate contact point for customers for new orders and service requests is via their chosen phone and internet provider”, given the telco was a wholesale broadband provider. But it’s NBN technicians, not contractors from Telstra, Optus, TPG or other retail telcos that complete connections.

Still, the NBN spokeswoman defended the telco’s delivery record, and each week NBN completes more than 7,500 fibre upgrades.

“According to our latest public data, 98 per cent of homes and businesses were connected within target timeframes agreed with phone and internet providers,” she said.

“Sometimes, appointments need to be rescheduled. Recently we have had to reschedule appointments to prioritise network restoration activities in areas that have been impacted by extreme weather conditions such as those recently seen in parts of North Queensland, South East Queensland and Northern New South Wales.

“This may also include bringing in technicians from other areas. In these situations, there may be less technicians available to complete installation appointments. We appreciate customers’ patience while we prioritise these works.”

The latest market indicators, which the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission released last week, revealed wireless customer numbers rose from 404,014 to 404,114 in the December quarter.

Overall growth in NBN has also plateaued; about 8.8 million Australians used its broadband services in the December quarter, compared with 8.76 million in the same period in 2023.

An NBN spokeswoman said an awareness campaign is yet to begin for the new fixed wireless project and expects more customers to sign up to the service once it’s under way.

Only a handful of small telcos – including Tangerine, More, Activ8me, Aussie Broadband, Leaptel and Superloop – are offering the new NBN wireless service.

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Originally published as ‘You won’t believe this’: NBN Co delivers after $750m upgrade flop