Federal Member for Wide Bay and Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss said today NBN Co will invest more than $34 million to upgrade its Interim Satellite Service and extend commercial satellite services to rural areas.
“The upgrade will improve ISS connection speeds for subscribers, and increase the capacity of the ISS for up to 9000 extra users,” Mr Truss said.
“This will be welcome news for those people in Wide Bay who have been frustrated by their ISS broadband experience, citing problems with connection reliability and data transfer rates.
“Each user will receive up to a third more capacity, enabling them to more reliably use the internet, email, and VOIP services during peak periods.
“For others in rural areas, a new subsidy scheme will allow households, businesses and primary producers to access commercial satellite broadband.”
Similar to the Australian Broadband Guarantee, the scheme will subsidise the cost and installation of in-premises equipment. Retail service providers will set the price of broadband packages available to consumers.
“The former Labor Government’s NBN ISS is a debacle,” Mr Truss said.
“Labor promised that the ISS could potentially cover 250,000 premises, but only leased enough capacity to cover 48,000 premises, which was quickly reached.
“The former government completely underestimated the demand for the ISS and had no credible plan to extend broadband coverage to rural and remote Australia in the time between the ISS reaching capacity and the Long Term Satellite Service (LTSS) coming into service.”
