Transcript: ABC Lateline 12/8/15

TONY JONES, PRESENTER: Paul Fletcher is the parliamentary secretary to the Minister for Communications in the Federal Parliament. He joins us from Canberra.

Thanks for being there. Now, in modern Australia, should it be part of the social contract that governments guarantee that there be cheap, uninterrupted, high-quality broadband for people living on remote farms and in remote communities? 

PAUL FLETCHER, PARL. SEC. TO MINISTER FOR COMMUNICATIONS: Well it's certainly important that there should be high-quality broadband all around Australia. That's why we're spending some $2 billion on the two long-term satellites that will be launched, the first of them to be launched October-November this year. That would deliver 25 megabits per second peak speed down, five megabits per second peak speed up - a lot faster than the Interim Satellite Service. Look, there are issues with the Interim Satellite Service. We inherited that from the previous government. They promised that there was capacity for 250,000 end users. In fact they only purchased enough transponder capacity for 48,000 and they didn't give NBN Co the right contractual or technical tools to manage the relationship with the retail service providers, the companies that actually provide the services.

TONY JONES: OK. Well I understand, yes, there clearly were problems from the outgoing government. Two years have passed now and what we just heard there, you heard the testimony of those people: 20 gig download limits is devastating remote education for these people. Why are those limits in place and can't that be fixed in the short term? 

PAUL FLETCHER: Well the fundamental issue is trying to use the scarce capacity on the Interim Satellite Service and allocate that as fairly as possible. We've taken a number of steps, invested $18.4 million to improve the capacity on the Interim Satellite Service by over a third.

TONY JONES: Can I just say - quickly - just a quick one on that: if you're able to do that by spending $18.5 million, couldn't you have spent more and increased the capacity by more? 

PAUL FLETCHER: Well, we need to strike the right balance between doing the best we can with the Interim Satellite Service and focusing on the Long Term Satellite Service, which is ...

TONY JONES: Sure, but could you have spent a bit more money and instead of a third better performance got a half or 60 per cent better? 

PAUL FLETCHER: Well, Tony, the - the total subsidy or the amount of money that's being spent per end user is about $7,000 on the Long Term Satellite Service, a big capital investment so that we can give Australians in remote areas the capacity to use satellite for distance education and other things. So we've established a distance education working group - that's officials of the Commonwealth Education Department, all the state Education departments, Commonwealth Communications Department, National Broadband Network, to make sure that when the Long Term Satellite Service is launched, some of the problems we've had with the Interim Satellite Service such as, frankly, a bit of a disconnect between what's in the curriculum and then the amount of capacity that's available. There's roughly, on average, nine gigabytes per end user available per month.

TONY JONES: Yeah, so - I'm just gonna go - we haven't got a lot of time, so just, can we specifically look at a couple of the problems? Shaping: the deliberate slowing down of internet speeds by the retail service providers when people reach their download limits. I mean, how are people with lots of children - and by the way, this is gonna go on for well over a year until the satellite - at least the first of these satellites is in place - how can these people educate their children under those sort of circumstances? 

PAUL FLETCHER: Well look, there's three things we're focused on. First, getting the best we can out of the Interim Satellite Service, that additional expenditure I talked about. And there is shaping. What that's designed to do is spread the use of this finite capacity most fairly because some 20 per cent of capacity was being used by two per cent of end users. Now no criticism of end users, but there was a problem in the end-to-end system. Second thing we're doing is making sure that the Long Term Satellite Service, we have an education product which is best suited to the needs of distance education users. So what we're looking at is using ...

TONY JONES: So what you're saying is the state and territory education systems built their education systems assuming that there'd be proper broadband and there isn't.

PAUL FLETCHER: We need to have end-to-end co-ordination between the Commonwealth, which is delivering the satellite, and the state and territory Education departments. And what we're looking at is having a second port on the modem in the end user's home and talking in state Education departments about whether they could provide a dedicated service over that. The technology is there to do that. What that would mean is that your download for the education service would not impact on your first service, your general broadband service. Third thing we're doing: improving regional and remote mobile services.

TONY JONES: OK, on that one, just let me bring you in. Ainsley McArthur, the distance education parent we just saw there, they couldn't get an Interim Satellite Service because they have a mobile signal, although probably quite a terrible one. They're actually spending $480 a month just to get the downloading data they need to educate their kids. I mean, this is not sustainable, is it?

PAUL FLETCHER: And certainly when the Long Term Satellite Service comes along, the end user prices will be significantly cheaper than that. But the other thing we're doing is increasing the physical availability of mobile. 499 new base stations have been committed to under the Abbott Government's program to spend $100 million on improving mobile coverage. In fact total investment will be $385 million, 499 new base stations, Telstra and Vodafone, all around the country under a program that we took to the last election, we've just announced the results of. That rollout will occur over the next three years.

TONY JONES: OK. Final question, one we didn't really get answered earlier: if you spent more money getting more space on that transponder, could you fix this problem now?

PAUL FLETCHER: Well, there is actually a finite amount of transponder capacity on current generation satellites. That's why the two new satellites are so important. They're what's called Ka-band. They'll have a lot more capacity than the existing interim satellite. About $2 billion of taxpayers' money being spent on making sure that people in remote Australia can get the broadband services they need, including for distance education.

TONY JONES: Paul Fletcher, we thank you very much for being there.

PAUL FLETCHER: Thank you