NBN Co has strongly defended its much-criticised Sky Muster satellite service, claiming it is currently delivering services to 70,000 premises out of a total target of 240,000.
“Despite the issues that we’ve had … we are still well on track to meeting our end-of-financial year goal of 80,000 homes and businesses connected with Sky Muster,” chief customer officer John Simon told this week’s Australian Satellite Forum meeting in Sydney.
He said NBN’s second bird, Sky Muster 2, is now fully operational and providing services to remote, regional and rural Australia.
Simon conceded that service interruptions and on-the-ground installation problems have been a source of frustration for consumers and RSP customers, but attributed this to “enormous demand from regional Australia and some early implementation challenges.”
He said NBN Co had deployed 147 network fixes and optimisation changes, and by April this year it had seen a 91 percent decrease in the network fault rate. And he noted: “in terms of data allowances and the price per gigabyte that end users are paying, [Ovum] rates Australia as a leading satellite provider, up there with the best.”
Labor’s shadow communications minister Stephen Jones was unimpressed. He told the conference NBN Co’s deployment of Sky Muster has been “nothing short of abysmal”, greatly damaging the reputation of satellite technology in Australia and called for establishment of an independent review into the service.
