By Roxanne Millar
A KEILOR family is getting stuck into encyclopaedias for school assignments as it comes to terms with life without the internet.
Justin Johns’ family of four has been waiting three years to get broadband to their suburban home and have watched their dial-up connection die during the battle.
Despite living in a metropolitan area, they can no longer surf the net and technicians are baffled as to why.
Mr Johns said his children, aged 16, 15 and nine – their other child is 17 months – were having trouble with school assignments because they could not get online to complete research.
“They’re cutting the pictures out of the encyclopaedias instead,” he said.
“But I don’t have a wall of encyclopaedias for all their assignments.”
Mr Johns said he was told he could get ADSL broadband when he moved to Keilor three years ago, but tests after he moved in showed he was too far from the exchange.
He signed up for ISDN but had to cancel it because of continuous problems.
The family were surviving on slow dial-up internet until one month ago when it mysteriously stopped working.
“I’ve had techie after techie out and they’ve tested the phone line, which is perfect,” he said.
“Then they do a higher test and find some fault.”
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He said all residents in his Highland Rd neighbourhood were offline.
“There are about two streets affected and most people have got kids,” he said.
“But because it isn’t the whole estate, it isn’t worth the (telecommunications) company’s while.”
Gorton MP Brendan O’Connor said that in the past month he had been inundated by similar complaints from people in Keilor, Sunshine West, Burnside and Caroline Springs.
He said Caroline Springs couple Peter and Belinda Steward applied for broadband 18 months ago but were told the exchange was full.
He said there needed to be a national broadband network and that Labor had pledged to provide it.
“Astonishingly, Australia ranks 25th in the world in terms of available internet bandwidth and 17th in the OECD in terms of broadband take-up,” Mr O’Connor said.
A Telstra spokesman said Mr Johns fell into the 7 per cent of the population that could not access ADSL broadband because they were too far from an exchange.
He said Mr Johns could access broadband from $17.49 per month through a wireless “next G” network that reached 98.8 per cent of people.
He said overall communications coverage in Australia would increase if fibre optic cabling was installed in the ground.
