RURAL South Australians have long had to put up with frustratingly unreliable and slow internet service, but the National Broadband Network is slowly bringing country SA into the 21st Century.
Subscribe now for unlimited access to all our agricultural news
across the nation
or signup to continue reading
While fixed wireless NBN has been rolled out across many regional centres, the vast majority of residents appear unaware the service is ready to go, according to NBN corporate affairs manager Jill Bottrall.
"Fixed wireless has been rolled out across a significant part of SA but a lot of people don't know that they have access to it," Ms Bottrall said.
"There are a lot of regions where only 9 per cent of people in communities are aware they can get a NBN service, so that means 91pc of people don't actually know they can get it.
"People should get onto the NBN website if they can and check their address, because quite often they find they have access.
“It wouldn't take a lot for them to get signed up, they just need to contact their retail provider and arrange a connection."
She said NBNCo's three-year roll out plan indicated that 750,000 premises would be in-plan, in-build or completed by September 2018.
"That plan doesn't include satellite, and we estimate that there will be another 35,000 premises that will access the NBN by satellite," Ms Bottrall said.
“Everyone who wants to join the NBN should be able to do so by 2020. We estimate that it’ll be 8 million to 12m homes and premises.”
Sky Muster, the first of two satellites to be used by the NBN, was launched last month, with the second satellite - scheduled to enter orbit next year - to act as a back up.
Ms Bottrall said people would be able to sign up for the satellite service from the second quarter of next year.
"Satellite is for people 'outside of the footprint' of fixed wireless or fixed line services," she said.
"They may be just outside a small country town or just a few metres away from someone who has fixed wireless, but because they can't actually see it by line of sight, they still have to go onto the satellite network because they can't see the tower."
While the NBN is mandated to deliver minimum download speeds of 25 megabits a second, some rural residents are disappointed that city users on fixed lines will be able to access much faster speeds than those available in the country.
But, Ms Bottrall said speeds of 25mb/s would suit a general household, but businesses may consider signing up for a higher speed where possible.
“Some people in the cities could get faster speeds if they wanted,” she said. “It’s comes down to what people are prepared to pay for.”
