“At the recent meeting of the Centroc Board I received a report regarding the current state of play for broadband in the region,” said Cr Duffy.

“Central NSW Councils (Centroc) has done a lot of work understanding the telecommunications network across

sixteen local government areas in our region.

“We have a good case to take to the government to ensure that the region gets what is required from the National Broadband Network rollout.

“High speed broadband is essential for education, health, businesses and working families in Central NSW.”

“Ninety nine per cent of our exchanges are fibre enabled and as our populations centre around these exchanges, so delivery of broadband to 80 per cent of our population will be quickly achievable.

“At the same time we don’t want to be left behind. We are well behind our city cousins and the whole country lags behind internationally.

“The roll out could take five years assuming they can find enough skilled people to make it happen.

“Being at the end of a five year roll out will only worsen our existing comparative disadvantage.

“The issue is even more complicated when considering the bids that have been tendered to the Federal Government to deliver broadband.”

The recent announcements regarding Telstra and other carriers putting their hats in the ring to deliver broadband to the nation means we have to go into bat hard for our community, Cr Duffy said.

“Some bids only offer to enable a State while others are national.

“The Telstra bid is non-compliant and talks about delivering 80-90 per cent high speed broadband.

“This begs the question of what will happen in regional Australia. The choice for the government is to do something about the regulatory framework, spend too much on an overbuild by duplicating the Telstra owned infrastructure or

back Telstra. There are no easy choices here.

“Timing is everything, Senator Stephen Conroy the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy is making the decision about how this is all going to work by March next year.

“At the Centroc Board meeting we resolved to put the pressure on between now and then..”