Australia’s Telecommunications Association (TelSoc) has repeated its call for a bipartisan approach to develop more robust communications infrastructure for Australia.

This was prompted by a recent report from Ookla that showed Australia’s broadband performance falling behind he performance of many comparable nations.

Earlier this month TelSoc made a submission to a parliamentary inquiry into the NBN, calling for a 10-year plan from NBN Co and for Federal and State governments to ensure more robust systems, with better backup in times of failure, particularly during major emergencies.

According to Ookla, Australia’s average broadband download speed is 41.8Mbps, well below the global average of 73.6Mbps, and its 18.8Mbps upload speeds compare with the global average of 40.4Mbps.

TelSoc president Professor Reg Coutts offered to arrange a meeting between Government and Opposition and a group of TelSoc’s expert members.

“We are less than six months away from the scheduled completion of [the NBN] and it’s not looking good,” he said.

“A third of the fixed-line network is technically incapable of delivering the sort of speeds consumers need now, much less what they will need in future.  We can’t go on ignoring the fact that we are falling further behind the rest of the world, especially the Asia-Pacific region where our economic future lies.”