Six thousand Riverside Gardens residents in regional Queensland will have access to high speed ADSL broadband technology by the end of March as part of the Australian Government and Telstra's response to the Regional Telecommunications Inquiry.

The Federal Member for Herbert, Peter Lindsay, joined me at Telstra's Gulliver Exchange today to announce the $600,000 project, which will provide ADSL access to about 6000 residents currently unable to take advantage of broadband technology.

The project involves Telstra constructing a new building on the Riverside Gardens estate to house new generation ADSL compatible equipment.

This initiative demonstrates the importance of service providers promoting and facilitating access to better Internet services.

The Australian Government welcomes these initiatives as part of Telstra's response to findings of the Regional Telecommunications Inquiry (RTI) report.

The RTI report stated that there was a need for Telstra and other service providers to more effectively promote and facilitate access to faster and more effective Internet services such as ADSL.

The Riverside Gardens upgrade is part of a number of initiatives being implemented by Telstra to improve the current reach of ADSL from approximately 75 per cent of services to up to 90 per cent over the next three years.

The Australian Government also announced a package of measures to boost broadband take-up in regional, rural and remote Australia in its response to the RTI.

Initiatives funded under the $142 million National Broadband Strategy announced in response to the RTI include:


$2.9 million over four years for a national coordination mechanism, the National Broadband Strategy Implementation Group;

$107.8 million over four years for the Higher Bandwidth Incentive Scheme (HiBIS);

$8.4 million to support demand aggregation in regional Australia through funding of demand aggregation brokers; and

$23.7 million for the Coordinated Communications Infrastructure Fund to accelerate the rollout of broadband into regional Australia in key sectors such as health and education.
These measures demonstrate the Government's commitment to increase access to broadband services in regional Australia at comparable prices to metropolitan areas and to highlight the benefits broadband can offer in the delivery of key services such as health and education.

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