TERRiA to Ensure Country Australians are No Longer Second Class Broadband Citizens

November 20, 2008: TERRiA today travelled to the New England region of north-west New South Wales to consult with local Mayors, business members, community spokespeople and council representatives about the state of broadband services available to country people.

As part of its bid for the new National Broadband Network, TERRiA will ‘roll-in’ the new infrastructure, starting with underserviced regional and rural areas as well as metropolitan ‘black spots’.

Speaking in Tamworth, TERRiA’s Chairman Michael Egan said it was critical that country Australians were not treated like second class citizens.

“TERRiA believes all Australians deserve equal access to affordable, reliable, high-speed broadband services, regardless of where they live,” said Mr Egan.

“Regional and rural areas contribute 65 per cent of Australia’s export income[1], but they are the ones we seem to ignore when it comes to the availability of critical telecommunications infrastructure.”

“Australia’s primary producers typically live in the areas most underserviced by existing broadband infrastructure. As key contributors to the national economy, it is simply not good enough that many have to fund the installation of their own transceivers so they can access broadband services.”

“The new National Broadband Network provides an opportunity to bring regional and rural Australia up to scratch with most metropolitan areas.”

“You don’t have to dig too deep to understand that there is a lot of frustration with the current state of telecommunications and broadband services in regional Australia. Country people have had to pay premium prices, rely on outdated technologies and suffer from poor quality services for too long,” said Mr Egan.

“Telstra has claimed that, should it bid to build the new National Broadband Network, it will take eight years to address rural and regional Australia. This is not acceptable.”

“TERRiA will lodge a crackerjack bid for the new National Broadband Network next week. Addressing the issues of access equity and pricing parity in regional areas is a central part of that bid.”

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About TERRiA

TERRiA is a consortium of five major infrastructure based telecommunications companies which will bid to provide Australia’s new National Broadband Network (NBN). It includes iinet, Internode, Optus, Macquarie Telecom and Primus.