blog You may not realise it unless you’re a Taswegian, but Labor’s National Broadband Network policy is not the first time residents of the state have been promised a Fibre to the Premises rollout by politicians. Nor is it the second time. In fact, the current NBN promises with regard to Tasmania are the end result of at least 12 years of political pledges made to residents in businesses in the state that they would get better broadband. So where’s the problem? As I write on Delimiter 2.0 today (subscriber content), we’re seeing a constant failure to deliver from the political class on this issue:
“Politicians in Tasmania and in Canberra have been promising residents of the Apple Isle fibre broadband for at least 12 years. The abject failure to deliver almost any improvement to the state’s basic telecommunications infrastructure in that time starkly demonstrates the rank incompetence of Australia’s political class in setting and deliverying broadband policy.”
I was speaking to a MP about this issue yesterday, and I emphasised that what Australians want from politicians and the whole political sector at the moment, when it comes to broadband, is stability and delivery. Fibre to the Node blah, Fibre to the Premises whatever. The fact remains that states such as Tasmania have been promised better broadband by politicians for more than a decade now, and have received almost nada. It’s time for Australia’s politicians to come together and get serious about the broadband issue. Because they’ve got more than a decade’s worth of failure behind them.