Most of Mudgee – over 5,000 homes – have been in an NBN serviceable area for nearly 18-months and will have other services, such as ADSL, turned off in March.
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Once an area is declared ‘NBN Ready’ those there have the year-and-a-half time frame to have moved over to the national broadband network.
The majority of Mudgee, 5063 homes, are due to be disconnected on March 9 and another 100 in September. Gulgong is set for switch-off in June, the town was one of the earliest connected to the NBN, however its disconnection date has been pushed back.
A number of small pockets of Mudgee that are yet to be connected to the NBN, so they’re 18-month period hasn’t commenced yet.
Harbour ISP director, Charles Tym, said that no one who can’t connect to the NBN will get disconnected from other services.
However, those in a serviceable area where the copper disconnection is due in March who haven’t switched over, risk being in the dark.
“It’s not a scare-tactic, but it’s best to move sooner rather than later, because there are only so many NBN technicians in the area and if they all get booked up in early March they may not have time to do yours before the disconnection,” he said.
An NBN local spokesperson said that there are a small number of premises within the nbn fixed line build in Mudgee, that are currently yet to be made serviceable and should be completed between the end of March and the end of August.
“NBN is designing our network to ensure everyone has access to fast broadband, however the distance of some homes and businesses from the network means a small number of premises may not be able to order a service over the NBN access network when the wider area has been switched on,” the spokesperson said.
“NBN regrets the delay in connecting these premises to the NBN, but unfortunately some premises are harder to connect from an engineering perspective and may be located further from existing NBN network assets.”
Mr Tym added that for the criticism of the NBN, he said the company have worked to address problems when they arise.
“They haven’t tried to sweep things under the carpet, if there’s been a problem they’ve acknowledged it, and they’ve worked with us in a number of cases to alleviate any detrimental effects,” he said.
And also flagged improvements that are on the horizon. Including; Fibre to the Curb, which would shorten the copper runs of fibre to the node and thus help some of the issues; trialing higher satellite speeds; and offering retailers the ability to sell more better bundles to customers.
Check if your address is in an NBN Ready area here.
