Bush internet customers share NBN satellite service with city residents

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The National Broadband Network (NBN) has been accused of dumping city customers on a service that provides satellite internet services to the bush.

The Better Internet for Rural, Regional and Remote Australia (BIRRR) lobby group has made a submission to the joint parliamentary inquiry into the NBN.

Spokeswoman Kylie Stetton said the NBN's Sky Muster satellite service was being used as a "dumping ground" for city customers.

"There's no doubt Sky Muster is being used as a dumping ground by the NBN for those homes that are harder to install or more expensive," Ms Stetton said.

"We are concerned that those who truly need Sky Muster capacity for data and speed now have to share it with metropolitan addresses.

"In some cases there appears to have been an ad hoc approach to several large, outlying city areas.

The NBN Co's Sky Muster service was established in April 2016 and includes two satellites designed specifically to provide broadband to the country's hard-to-reach places.

The latest NBN weekly report shows Sky Muster is expected to cover nearly 430,000 properties.

BIRRR estimates about 4,000 of those homes are in "urban" electorates.

An NBN spokesperson told the ABC: "Sky Muster is only used in outer metropolitan areas as sparingly as possible, and only when premises are located too far from the fibre network or too far and/or not in line of sight of our fixed wireless towers.

"Our technical designers do everything they can to bring premises in difficult terrain and hard-to-access places into a fixed line or fixed wireless footprint.

"To be clear, it is absolutely our preference to limit satellite access only to those premises where other technologies are unworkable or unaffordable."

Federal Member for Kennedy Bob Katter is opposed to any residents living in city areas using the Sky Muster service, which he said was not doing the job as well as it could be.

"If it gave us the speeds I'd be happy, but it's giving us half the speed it should be," Mr Katter said.

"There's no justification for Sky Muster providing services that can be provided by the NBN to the city."

A doubling of the maximum monthly data usage per household under the Sky Muster network was welcomed by rural and regional lobby groups in October.

Data allowances increased from 150 gigabytes a month to 300GB a month, but the NBN Co has previously conceded the Sky Muster network has been beset with reliability issues.

Inquiry into rollout of NBN in rural and regional areas

A joint parliamentary inquiry is underway into the rollout of the NBN in rural and regional areas.

It is examining the planning, mapping and eligibility for satellite, fixed wireless and fixed line services.

"The rollout program for NBN's fixed wireless service will be ongoing until the end of 2020 in our continuing efforts to provide greater coverage to as many regional and remote premises as possible," the NBN spokesperson said.

"The two Sky Muster satellites, designed by Australians for Australians, have been deployed to provide broadband to just 3 per cent of the nation's premises that cannot effectively be connected to a fixed line or fixed wireless service.

"In the coming year business and enterprise grade services will become available on Sky Muster services as well."

Submissions have now closed and the report is yet to be released.

The first federal report by the joint standing committee called for an overhaul of how NBN Co was regulated, with a need for tougher rules and a stronger watchdog to police the rollout.

Topics: telecommunications, internet-technology, rural, government-and-politics, cairns-4870, australia