NBN maintenance not good enough for rural Aussies, report finds

Alex Angove-Plumb - Digital Content Editor

Last updated 20 March 2026

Rural, regional and remote Australians are being left behind when it comes to NBN connectivity, claims a recent report from consumer advocacy group Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN). The report is part of ACCAN’s consumer engagement project, which reaches out to consumers, small businesses and stakeholder organisations with the goal of discovering real-world issues and then consulting NBN Co on its future expenditure and work programs.

The performance gap between the fixed-line NBN technologies of more populated areas and wireless technologies such as Fixed Wireless and Sky Muster satellite has been well lamented over the years, but it goes beyond that.

Reliability was a key concern among respondents, many of whom shared stories about service disruptions during peak times and school holidays. And it’s much worse for those living in tourist destinations. Some communities find the network becomes unusable as holiday visitors flock to their area. For example, network capacity in Tasmania’s Port Arthur is reportedly unable to handle the arrival of large cruise vessels, each of which can potentially add thousands of tourists and crew to the network while docked at port.

Another common problem is with service timeframes. Network outages happen everywhere – it’s unavoidable. But many regional and rural Aussies report it can take days or longer to get back online after a network fault has been reported. This is considerably longer than they are in suburban or metro areas, where simple faults are often serviced within the day. Respondents also talked about being bounced back and forth between NBN Co and their service provider when trying to organise network repairs, unsure who to contact.

As a result of network unreliability and the lengthy timeframes in addressing faults, many people have a backup subscription to a different service, such as a mobile data plan or Starlink. This can double or more a monthly bill, effectively transferring some of the cost of maintaining Aussie home internet connections to families and local communities, as opposed to being the responsibility of national infrastructure.

Given the remoteness of these communities, internet connectivity can be more important than elsewhere in Australia. Many respondents indicated they depend on the internet as an alternative to face-to-face communication. The internet has also become crucial to people with medical or assisted living needs, such as health monitors, video interpretation tools for those with vision impairment, or simply regular telehealth appointments. Rural and regional communities also require reliable natural disaster warnings, but some respondents reported many of these have been migrated online and can become inaccessible when needed.

To help address these issues, ACCAN made several recommendations to NBN Co, which include “Service request timeframes should be significantly improved in regional, rural and remote areas”, and “NBN Co should directly compensate consumers for failures to meet service standards, with rebates going directly to consumers rather than retailers”.

Since 2018, NBN Co has been required to pay a $25 rebate for every late connection, fault rectification and missed appointment. But this rebate has been paid to NBN Co's customers – i.e. the telco, as opposed to the consumer who has been directly affected. And even so, a small one-off payment of $25 couldn't account for a household's need to add a second backup internet connection to the monthly bills because of regular or lengthy NBN service disruptions.

NBN Co isn’t obligated to adopt ACCAN’s recommendations, but it's not totally autonomous, either. On a regular basis, it must submit a Statement of Pricing Intent (SPI) for review by the ACCC, as well as to oversight by consumers and industry representatives. This SPI is basically its expenditure plans for the next few years.

This review process gives the ACCC and the public some sway with regards to what NBN Co spends its money on in the near future – and, in this case, a chance to use ACCAN's report to make sure remote and regional infrastructure issues are part of the discussion. The current SPI expires on June 30 this year, so we shouldn’t have to wait long to see the report has an impact.

Alex Angove-Plumb

Digital Content Editor

Alex Angove-Plumb is a Digital Content Editor at WhistleOut and an award-winning journalist. He's been in the tech publishing industry since 2010, putting him a few short years away from the title of Grizzled Ancient in his chosen profession. He was an original WhistleOut-er before running NBN Co's corporate blog for two years, then moving on to a lengthy stint at CHOICE. Now he's come home.

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