‘Black spots’ driving case for NBN roll out

JOHN VAN KLAVEREN
INTERNET black spots and patchy broadband connection speeds plague the Geelong region, according to IT experts.
They identified Bell Park, South Geelong, Wandana Heights, some areas of the Bellarine Peninsula and Leopold as among the worst for limited services.
The black-spot list follows last week’s Independent revealing that Geelong was pushing to jump the queue for connection to Australia’s National Broadband Network.
Barwon Computer Solutions general manager Adam Tattersall said even his own Highton home was unable to connect to ADSL2, which offers the highest speeds currently available.
“My phone line goes back to the Belmont exchange and I have to make do with a maximum speed of 1.5mbs. Anything greater than that would just make the system fall over,” Mr Tattersall said.
“The whole area is definitely patchy. There’s congestion in some exchanges because there are a limited number of ADSL ports and it slows everything down.”
Mr Tattersall said Geelong desperately needed the NBN roll-out because of the number of head offices in the region.
“These businesses need really large internet connections,” he said.
“A lot of Geelong business data has to be kept off site because the system here just can’t handle it. A fibre system with upgraded exchanges would open Geelong up to a whole new era in technology.”
Mr Tattersall said his business had to install multiple phone lines into its premises to achieve enough speed to service the needs of clients.
Hewstone IT managing director George Heather said a big issue for business was the variability in speeds presently available.
“There are a lot of technology-based industries in Geelong now but what we need from a business perspective is similar up and down-load speeds,” Mr Heather said.
“Business has to do so much off-site storage of backups instead of doing it online because the upload speeds are so slow.
“There’s a perception that Geelong is well serviced because we have Neighbourhood Cable offering high speeds but that only covers a portion of the area. Outlying areas are lucky to get 1.5mbs.
“There are a number of older exchanges around Geelong – the Belmont exchange is notorious for slow speeds.”
Mr Heather said cables to exchanges sometime ran in loops, so proximity to an exchange did not necessarily mean faster speeds.
“You could be a kilometre from the exchange but your cable could run an extra two or three kilometres,” he said.