Evidence submitted to the NBN Joint Standing Committee has revealed the multi-technology mix will fail to meet the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison Government’s own national NBN speed quality mandate in five out of eight states and territories.

According to NBN Co, the rollouts in Western Australia, Tasmania, Queensland, South Australia and the ACT will not meet the national quality benchmark of 90 per cent of premises being able to achieve 50Mbps speeds in the fixed line footprint.

Furthermore, these sub-par levels are based on network performance in the year 2022 – not 2020 when the rollout is forecast to be complete.

This comes after Labor repeatedly warned Communications Minister Mitch Fifield that ‘Fibre to the Node’ levels were inadequate, particularly in Western Australia, which is now the state with the slowest fixed-line speeds.

“Rather than taking action, the Minister irresponsibly increased the ‘Fibre to the Node’ footprint by 100,000 premises in the 2019 NBN Corporate Plan as cost and time blowouts on his bungled HFC network began to bite,” Labor’s shadow communications spokesperson Michelle Rowland said in a statement.

“It is astonishing that despite a $21.4 billion cost blowout, and rollout delay of four years, the Liberals’ can’t even meet their own low-ball speed mandate in five out of eight states and territories.”

Are you connected to the NBN? What do you think of the speeds in your area?