Internet Satisfaction

This month I am interested in the level of satisfaction that you have with your internet service. To gauge this and the level of interest in the NBN, I have setup a 10 question survey. The survey is anonymous and aggregated results will be published in my article next month. The survey should only take a couple of minutes. Note that I am not being asked to do this by any 3rd party, I am interested in the community sentiment regarding internet services and possible access to NBN in the region. The survey can be accessed from here http://ow.ly/NDvbj

On a related matter,  at the ordinary meeting of council on the 20th of May, the Chittering Shire council debated the planning proposal for the NBN tower on Bell Hill Reserve in Bindoon. While the planning officer's recommendation was to approve the application, Council decided to split proposal in two motions. The first motion was for the Shire to gain rezoning of that area for telecommunications purposes from the department of Land Administration. If successful, NBN would then need to enter into a lease agreement with the Shire. The second motion included a number of environmental conditions as well as the co-location of the DFES pager service on the tower (which will improve coverage for emergency service pagers). The first motion was defeated with 2 councillors supporting the motion and 5 rejecting it. This meant the planning approval for the NBN tower was rejected. The second motion was no longer relevant but was also defeated 2 to 5. It is not clear what the next step is for the NBN progress. Alternative sites may need to be reviewed or NBN may attempt to take the planning request to a higher authority. Either way the deployment of NBN in the region is going to be delayed. The Bindoon tower is required in order for the NBN network to link between Gingin and Lower Chittering and so  a delay to the tower in Bindoon delays the deployment throughout the region. For a full reading of the details (all 44 pages of it!) you can download the minutes from the shire website at chittering.wa.gov.au.