By LACHLAN MOORHEAD
FEDERAL Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull visited Pakenham on Thursday to announce the government’s $34 million expansion to the NBN Co’s Interim Satellite Service (ISS).
Mr Turnbull was joined by NBN chief technology officer Gary McLaren, Liberal candidate for Bass Brian Paynter and McMillan MP Russell Broadbent at the latter’s Pakenham property to announce the new ISS that is expected to provide broadband to 9000 additional households in remote areas, before a long-term satellite service is set up in 2015.
Mr Turnbull said $18.4 million of the expansion funding will also be spent on increasing the bandwidth available to the 44,000 existing ISS users.
“We’re also going to institute new and stricter rules on the use of bandwidth to prevent a very small minority of very heavy users from crowding everybody else out,” Mr Turnbull said.
“And we believe what this will do for the existing people on the interim satellite is ensure they are able to do their email, their e-commerce, Skype and all of those things people want to do online,” he said.
Mr Turnbull said the NBN Co have also agreed to establish a subsidy scheme for the 9000 new ISS users, whose eligibility requirements will be “scrutinised very carefully.”
“This will be for people who generally have no access to any alternative method of broadband and there will be a subsidy towards the costs of their dish and so forth,” he said.
New users will be able to register for the ISS in the coming months.
See next week’s Gazette for an update.
