NBN rollout worries
CONCERNS about the NBN rollout in Rockhampton are already being raised after Thursday's announcement.
Residents in a pocket on the edge of Koongal, which currently has little internet service, are wondering if they too will get NBN, among other things.
Neil Fisher says the pocket, on the corner of Cooper St and Rockonia Rd, had struggled to get internet service for years, with no ADSL available and limited wireless which drops out.
"Why can't we be the first to get it," he asked.
"We just don't get the services here that people half a kilometre away take for granted."
Sue Harvey and Tony Williams, who both have a house full of teenagers, said their wireless service at their homes was expensive and dropped out.
"It's been very frustrating to get connected when you are trying to deal with those telco groups," Mr Williams, a Rockhampton councillor, said.
NBN Co spokesman Andrew Sholl said the NBN would run along underground telephone infrastructure.
He said no absolute answer for those Koongal residents was available yet, but would be when the street level maps - which outlined exactly which streets would get the optic fibre - were completed, just before construction starts.
Mr Sholl said NBN Co had Telstra infrastructure maps, but further work needed to be done.
As for who gets it first, NBN Co had an eight-point selection criteria that mapped out the latest rollout sites.
NBN Co's criteria
1. First, we needed to complete the sites that we had announced already - our second release sites and the 12-month plan we announced a few months ago
2. Take account of the instructions given to us by the Government to get a balance between regional and metro areas, to achieve a balance across the States, and to complete Tasmania by 2015
3. Plan on the basis of the availability of infrastructure from Telstra. The exchanges and dark fibre links that allow us to build our Fibre nodes and connect them to the Points of Interconnect.
4. We prioritised growth corridors that are likely to contain high numbers of Greenfields sites so that we could, as efficiently as possible, execute on the new Greenfields policy
5. We prioritised the links to support our Fixed wireless and satellite networks so that we could bring hi-speed broadband to rural Australia as fast as possible
6. And, of course we sequenced the build to minimise costs and operate as efficiently as possible.In implementing these principles we made use of some optimisation software.
7. We then had to ensure we load balanced the build for our construction contractors and adjusted the build if we were likely to cause congestion in local communities.
8. Finally, we ensured we supported the four universities that we had been working with and who are focussed on broadband applications - James Cook, New England, Wollongong and Melbourne.
