City of Armadale residents will be quick to take up the NBN once it is constructed because of their demographics and the issues they have had with current internet services according to mayor Henry Zelones.
Figures released by the NBN Co showed only about half of the 136,000 homes able to connect to the NBN had done so.
Preliminary construction has already begun in the city with NBN Co contractors spotted running cable along Railway Avenue.
Suburbs like Armadale, Seville Grove, Harrisdale and Piara Waters could expect construction to begin from April this year while suburbs close to Kelmscott would see it begin from July.
Mr Zelones said NBN take up in the city would be greater because so far it was mainly only available in inner city areas where older populations weren’t as reliant on the fastest internet.
He also said because areas like Seville Grove had been plagued with internet issues for years residents would flock to a reliable service.
“Some of those areas that have not taken it up are older inner areas and I think it has to do a lot with the fact that a lot of their communities are older, they don’t necessarily rely on higher speeds for work or anything else,” he said.
“The access to the broadband is hit and miss across Armadale.
“I’m in Kelmscott and I get quite good service albeit interrupted every now and then because of the old copper wire so I’m looking forward to it personally.”
An NBN Co spokeswoman said they were reaching take up rate targets.
“NBN’s Corporate Plan states that the target take-up rate across residential and business areas is 49 per cent in FY18, growing to a long term target of 73 per cent,” she said.
“WA has almost reached that FY18 figure already 47per cent and we are seeing excellent results across the state.”
Households in fixed line areas have 18 months to connect to the NBN once construction has finished before their existing services were switched off.
Armadale and Kelmscott were still on track for construction of the NBN to start in the second and third quarter of this calendar year respectively.
