You have to feel for the owners of Nowra Fresh. They’re confronting the busiest period of the year still stuck in the digital limbo between the NBN, Telstra and the old ADSL broadband systems.
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They’re NBN ready, which means they’ve been thrown off their old ADSL connection, but they’ve been waiting months to be connected by Telstra.
Forced in the interim to rely on so called dongles, which are chronically vulnerable to outages, they are understandably frustrated and furious. No matter which way you slice it, they have copped a raw deal and all of us should be concerned.
Full of great promise when first flagged by the Rudd government, then scaled back by the Abbott-Turnbull government, we were told, to enable it to be rolled out faster and at less cost, the NBN has fallen way short of expectations.
In and around Nowra, we’ve heard of many instances where, to borrow from Winston Churchill, a digital curtain has descended across the city.
We’ve told of residents who have been informed they’ll miss out on an NBN connection because their properties are too far from the nearest node and don’t have line of sight to wireless towers. They’re closer to town than properties that will connect to the NBN but a million miles from getting decent internet.
By far the worst example of this digital divide we’ve encountered, though, is that faced by Nowra Fresh. The digital curtain has actually fallen across the car park it shares with neighbouring businesses, which are up and running on the NBN. Rubbing salt into that wound is the fact the owners can’t expect to have the issue addressed before Christmas.
The reason this issue has remained unresolved for so long is even more galling. The technicians from the so called resolution team have simply not been able to locate the building. That’s right, they couldn’t find Nowra Fresh, which sits on perhaps the most prominent corner in Nowra. Go figure.
If it’s tough enough for residents trying to enjoy entertainment as its delivered in the 21st century – and we know of many who have come within seconds of launching boots at their buffering screens – it’s even worse for businesses whose livelihood is under threat. That has a flow-on effect throughout the entire community.
The disconnect between Telstra, the NBN and this customer should be fixed. Today.
