This month the Joint Standing Committee on the National Broadband Network heard evidence from the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman, and that evidence was damning. The testimony revealed that the NBN is simply not delivering outcomes for consumers. This is hardly surprising, given the fiasco that is Malcolm Turnbull's second-rate NBN, but it is still galling—and more than a trifle inconvenient for the many thousands of people who are trying to get decent NBN coverage, who have to connect to the NBN, and who have to suffer through it. NBN consumers are 20 times more likely to put in a complaint to the telecommunications ombudsman than consumers of any other telecommunications service. They complain that they are simply not getting the service they paid for and that, too often, they—frustratingly—get passed between NBN and their retail service provider when there is a problem. That buck-passing is absolutely infuriating, and we hear about all the time. Madam Deputy Speaker, when your phone will not work and your internet speed is much worse than it was before you even tried to connect to the NBN—and NBN blame Telstra, and Telstra blame NBN. But that is exactly what is happening all around this country. I will give you one example where it has been happening in the last week—that is Bayway Village, an over-55 village on Nelson Bay Road at Fern Bay in my electorate of Paterson. On Monday morning last week, my office contacted our NBN representative—to be fair, she is as helpful as she can be, and I must credit her for that—and Telstra to report that some residents of Bayway Village had called us on mobiles to tell us their land lines and their internet were not working. They said that NBN contractors were working in the area and had, apparently, crossed nearby lines, which had resulted in phones being out for nearly the entire weekend.
Now, we are not talking about a few households—although I have not personally verified it, residents have told my office that they believe up to 500 properties and 800 residents have been affected. I did say this is an over-55's village, so some of the more elderly residents rely on medical alarms, which rely on phone lines.
On Tuesday, with no reply from Telstra or NBN, my office followed it up. On Wednesday, NBN replied—still no reply from Telstra. NBN said that the matter was being investigated but that NBN contractors did not believe they had caused the issue. So, NBN points the finger at Telstra.
On Thursday, NBN advised that its contractors had continued investigations and discovered that there was a fault in the existing Telstra cable coming out of the exchange and that there were 30 residents they knew of without a phone connection. They were hoping the issue would be resolved by the close of business Thursday.
Fast forward to Tuesday this week—yes, that means another weekend without phones or internet at Bayway Village. My office was contacted again by a resident of the village to say that Telstra had been on site but would now not be able to send technicians out until Friday. Does that mean Telstra calls the fault? We are still not sure—still, no phones.
My office advised NBN that Telstra had been there, and our NBN rep said, 'What's happened here is that the information we were provided by Telstra was incorrect. Based on that information, the contractor cut off some of the lines'—seriously. Regardless of who is to blame, it is still not clear who is going to fix it. The residents wait and, still, they have no phones. It is just unbelievable.
Another incident was reported to my office this week—and this has nothing to do with NBN, only Telstra. However, I feel it is important to raise it, because it goes to the broader issue of the parlous state of telecommunications in this country in 2017. It involves a business at Heatherbrae in my electorate of Paterson, New River Environmental, which distributes its Ecoworkz range of organic chemical products from premises in Heatherbrae near Raymond Terrace. These products are organic, eco-friendly and are used in industry, hospitality, agriculture and animal care. I am told what they are doing is actually quite cutting-edge, which is terrific.
Ecoworkz owner, Neil Tumbers, called my office out of frustration this week because the company's premises at Heatherbrae has been without phones or internet for two weeks. This is a business—can you imagine running a business with no phones or internet? Under normal conditions, that would be bad enough, but Ecoworkz has just launched its online sales business. So, it is an internet sales business with no internet—brilliant!
It spent $30,000 to set up a website and an online sales system and had just sent its first lot of products to South Korea, the beginning of an export deal that could net this Heatherbrae company in my electorate up to $10 million over the next five years—and that is nothing to be sneezed at. But now they cannot talk to their South Korean buyers about their order or about future orders. They have tried to talk on mobiles, but the language barrier means that email is the only successful way to correspond with the South Koreans. But they do not have any email at the moment. So after complaining to Telstra every day for two weeks, they are still without phones or internet. Lucky they are cutting-edge—maybe some of their cutting-edge would come to this government!
According to Mr Tumbers, they have been told by Telstra at various times, 'It'll be fixed today.' 'It'll be fixed tomorrow.' 'A technician will be there today at four'—we all know those lines when they come through. 'A technician will be there between four and five.' 'It won't be fixed until April 4.' 'It will be fixed on March 23' but, by that stage, it was already March 25. Madam Deputy Speaker Claydon, you can hear that this is a complete joke! But you know what? It is not a joke; it is serious. These conversations happened. This is a business. It is just not on! How could any business operate this way? And this is even before they have signed up to the NBN.
Not a week goes by in which my office does not receive complaints about the parlous state of telecommunications in this country, NBN, Telstra and the buck-passing between them. We have a community at Rutherford and Aberglasslyn where about 150 homes dotted around the place still cannot connect to the NBN, despite their neighbours and the rest of the suburb being able to connect to it. So one person is connected and their neighbour has got no connection at all. We have got a similar story in Gillieston Heights and in Weston. And that is before we start on the many other complaints from people like me and my neighbours at Buchanan: we cannot even get ADSL where I live, and we have to rely on expensive dongles.
Then of course we move on to delivery speeds. I noted a story in The Australian this week about how some NBN users are receiving:
… peak-time connection speeds as low as 1/500th of the service they are paying for …
The story went on:
Government entity NBN Co, which provides wholesale internet services, and retailers such as Telstra and Optus, who sell those services to the public, each blame the other for the problems.
Well, don't we know that to be true! The story continued:
NBN Co says many retailers—there are more than 140 selling NBN hook-ups to the public—fail to buy enough bandwidth to provide the speeds they advertise.
And therein lies the problem. Retailers say they are being held back by NBN's infrastructure—the Turnbull government's cheap and shoddy fibre-to-the-node, which uses existing copper wire systems for the last leg of the connection to the home, rather than Labor's fibre-to-the-home, which would take high-speed optical cable all the way. Well, now we have the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission examining the issue—and not before time.
Too many people are being unfairly inconvenienced by the state of telecommunications under this government. It is not good enough. We all know it is not good enough. We have got homes without phones and businesses without internet, in this day and age, and it is not good enough that our internet speeds are slower than a wet weekend. In Australia in 2017, we deserve better.
In closing, I would just like to say that we do have a House of Representatives and Senate joint standing committee which was established to inquire into and report on the rollout of the National Broadband Network. I know it is fairly late notice, but those submissions close this Friday, 31 March. Please, if you want to do something about this, put in a submission to the inquiry of the Joint Standing Committee on the National Broadband Network. It is vital that we get as much evidence as we can to tell the story of what is going on out there, not only in my electorate of Paterson but right across the country. Seriously, the cheap and cheerful option is just a misery for everyone involved. The government knows that. They need to get on board and get it sorted out.
