Member for Farrer Sussan Ley announced on March 25 that 52 NBN wireless towers across her electorate would benefit from the boost.
It includes Deniliquin, Mathoura, Barmah, Koondrook-Barham, Cobram-Barooga, Echuca-Moama (2), Tocumwal, Finley and Berrigan North.
While the further investment into NBN was welcome news for local stakeholders, questions into the timeline of the improvements were raised by Berrigan Shire CEO Karina Ewer.
“It (the upgrades) can’t come fast enough,” she said.
“I don’t know what the timeline for that is, but if the NBN roll-out is anything to go off we could still be here at the next election.”
Ms Ewer said the current NBN connection Berrigan Shire residents are expected to put up with is “appalling”.
“I don’t know who thinks you can work on an internet connection that is 50 (megabytes per second) up and 20 (megabytes per second) down,” she said.
“How does anyone work on that now?
“But that is what people in Berrigan Shire are expected to do.”
This has forced Berrigan Shire Council to look at a solution of their own.
“We’re working with Telstra at the moment to see if there is an option for us to pull fibre ourselves,” said Ms Ewer.
“I don’t know if that is an option or what the cost will be – it could be quite frightening.
“It’s not what I want to do, but what I’m going to have to do if I want to move Berrigan into a more current environment.
“The difficulty is that the government has given responsibility of service provision to telecommunication companies who care more about their bottom lines than their social responsibilities to provide equitable service to all.
“I think it’s appalling that local councils have to pick up where others do not see any return on investment, so the community pays again.”
While conversations have only been ongoing for a “couple of weeks”, Ms Ewer said something needs to be done sooner rather than later.
“I can’t move up with council on any of the upgraded functionalities that our community expects of us unless we have a decent internet connection, and we don’t – there’s my problem.”
Ms Ewer said the current connection makes it impossible for local businesses to compete with their city counterparts.
Ms Ley said the pending upgrades are “vital in the ongoing effort to bridge the communications divide between cities and the bush”.
She said in ‘‘most cases’’, towers would receive double the coverage range, with speeds reaching 100 megabytes per second (Mbps) in non-peak periods, and 50 Mbps during the network’s busier night-time hours.
Upgrades to the towers are expected to start this year.
