By Derek Schlennstedt
Healesville residents may miss out on fibre to the node technology (FTTN), and instead receive a satellite system reserved for remote Australian locations.
While the NBN rollout has delivered FTTN services to the majority of Healesville, some houses along Ayres Road will only be receiving the Sky Muster satellite system instead.
In a media release from late 2015, NBN Co cited that the Sky Muster system was designed to be used in some of the most remote locations of Australia.
“Sky Muster is designed to serve more than 400,000 premises in some of the most remote and isolated parts of Australia, and islands such as Norfolk, Christmas, Cocos and Lord Howe,” said NBN Co in a 2015 media release.
Nicole Hornsby and husband Michael bought land on Ayers Road hoping to make the move back to Nicole’s hometown where they could work from home.
However, the cost associated with Satellite Internet, and the reduction in internet speeds will inhibit their capacity to work there.
Nicole first became aware of the problem when she realised her property was not included on the rollout map, and only after investigating and contacting NBN and Telstra numerous times did they find out they would be receiving the satellite system.
“At no time have NBN Co told us what service we would be getting -neither as part of the online registration or through our direct correspondence with them,” Nicole said.
“We found out we would be receiving Sky Muster in January from Telstra.”
NBN Co has a variety of different internet technologies in the rollout, with Fibre to the Node offering faster speeds of 25-100Mbps and Sky Muster only offering up to 25Mbps.
Residents of Healesville are concerned that NBN.co have adopted a ‘no dig’ policy that once the work finishes in the area, contractors will not return and they will be left with the satellite system.
NBN Co has been mandated to deliver speeds of up to 25mbps download, and 5 upload to every household and business in Australia.
When contacted by the Mail, NBN Co provided a written statement saying that the FTTN network did not pass beyond 100 Ayers Road due to it being ‘beyond the fixed line footprint’
“It is one of many pockets of communities throughout Australia that are situated just beyond the fixed line footprint that nbn is committed to assessing and evaluating for the best technology.
However, we don’t have a timeframe for when they will all be individually assessed,” NBN Co said in a statement.
That fixed line footprint is described as dense urban locations where it is efficient for NBN Co to roll out FTTN across an area, but, where houses start to become spread out and become dispersed, a fixed line footprint is implemented as it becomes inefficient to run fibre to those areas.
The fixed line footprint for Ayres Road in Healesville is located at 100 Ayres Road, meaning any properties beyond that will not receive fibre to the node.
Nicole and her husband were hoping to work from their home in Healesville, however, she says that they may not be able to do that if they receive the Sky Muster service.
“We require continual connection to computers in Sydney via the internet; Sky Muster states that it is not suitable for this purpose … … . Issues of latency and reliability would also make the work impossible,” she said.
Jill Botrrall, Corporate affairs manager for NBN.co has said that they are reassessing which services are delivered to the area, and that NBN will return at a later date to make a decision.
“We have to make a determination about what is going to best suit that area, and we put those premises just beyond the footprint, so we’ll come back and look at it later.”
With no date for reassessment, the future of what internet service they receive remains unknown, and until then residents will be placed on the Sky Muster system. NBN Co has not yet confirmed how many Healesville properties will be receiving Sky Muster technology but sections of Airlie Road, Badger Avenue and Mcgrettons Road have yet to be allocated a network system and may also receive the Sky Muster satellite technology.
Nicole urges residents to check their addresses on the NBN home and business ‘address check’ and also check the NBN rollout map to see if they are included in it.
