One in four to miss out under Labor Broadband policy

“Labor’s candidate for Indi must come clean on which local towns and communities will miss out under the ALP’s discredited broadband plan,” Sophie Mirabella, the Federal Member for Indi, said today.

“An astonishing one in four Australians, or three million homes and small businesses, will miss out completely on broadband under Labor,” Mrs Mirabella said.

“In contrast, the Coalition has a rock solid and guaranteed plan to provide broadband to every Australian who wants it.”

“We will extend high speed broadband to 99 percent of the population via a new state-of-the-art WiMAX, ADSL2+ and fibre broadband network and provide a $2,750 2-way satellite broadband subsidy for the remaining one percent.”

“Labor falls well short, and wants to waste $4.7 billion of taxpayer’s money in providing a service to highly commercial metropolitan areas that private industry has said it will do itself.”

“The Coalition has moved to safeguard $2 billion in Government funding to provide broadband to rural, regional and remote Australia with legislation passed in September. But if Labor gets control of Parliament, they can strip this funding away, and have promised to do so.”

“It is extraordinary that Labor would take away the critical funds to provide broadband to a quarter of the population, just so it can spend it in areas that would be serviced by private providers anyway.”

The reason for this is that Labor has picked just one technology – a metro-friendly fibre technology which works very well if you are living within 1.5kms of either a telephone exchange or telephone junction box (node), but is useless if you are living a few kilometers away from town as many regional Australians do.

Under the Coalition, regional Australians, and indeed metropolitan Australians, will get access to speeds of 12 megabit per second which is 40 times faster than what most people use today. You will be paying between $35 and $60 per month for this service. Under the Coalition, high speed broadband will be extended to 99% of the population.

“I call on Ms Leschen to be honest with the people of Indi and tell them who will miss out in this half-baked plan for broadband,” Mrs Mirabella said.