The Australian government Friday committed to expanding its fibre broadband Internet network to a further 300,000 homes across the vast island continent if re-elected at next month’s polls.
Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s multi-billion-dollar Internet rollout is seen as a key point of difference in the August 21 elections, with the opposition vowing to abolish the National Broadband Network (NBN).
“The objective for the fibre and superfast broadband has now lifted from 90 percent of Australian households to 93 percent of Australian households,” Gillard told reporters in Perth.
The network, which is under construction, is designed to provide Australians — from remote Outback settlements to sprawling urban centres — with faster broadband access by 2017.
Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said 6,000 kilometres (3,720 miles) of optical fibre would spread out across the nation — with an an extra 300,000 households to receive fibre to their premises under the latest plan.
Remaining homes would be connected to the NBN via wireless or satellite technology because he said it was not economically possible for fibre to reach every residence in Australia — the world’s sixth largest country after Russia, Canada, China, the US and Brazil.
“There is no doubt that the NBN has the potential to end the tyranny of distance once and for all,” Conroy said, adding that only about nine percent of the country’s landmass was inhabited.
“For too long, Australians living in remote and regional Australia have had to put up with expensive and slow broadband.”
The government has argued that unless the NBN goes ahead, Australia will lose IT jobs to countries such as Singapore, South Korea and Japan and also suffer economically.
But the opposition conservative coalition said the cost of the network would likely skyrocket above the projected 43 billion dollars (38.6 billion US), meaning consumers would pay significantly more for Internet access.
“The coalition does not support Labor’s reckless NBN. We would not proceed with this arrangement if elected,” spokesman Tony Smith said in a statement.
