Those households will not have access to the anticipated one gigabyte per second (Gbps) speeds to eventually be enjoyed by those in town.

Work on the town’s fibre network won’t start before 2015 at the earliest.

The federal government has announced that 93 per cent of households will have access to the network at speeds up of up to 1 Gbps (or one thousand, million bits per second) with the remaining seven per cent connected via slower technologies, either fixed wireless or satellite (at up to 12 million bits per second).

In the Tenterfield local government area, however, these ratios are more like 50 per cent on fibre and 50 per cent on slower technologies.

Wallangarra computer consultant Trevor Preece said he was drawn into the marketing hype surrounding the NBN launch more than a year ago, assuming he and his clients would be enjoying high-speed fibre internet access, but quickly realised the line of fibre wouldn’t be reaching his business or that of many of his clients.

He was angry at the time, but has come to accept it.

He said he had a number of clients who made plans in anticipation of connecting to the fibre network, who now needed his assistance in exploring other options as they could only expect a fixed wire internet connection.

“Marketing by the government was a misrepresentation of facts,” Mr Preece said.

Independent Member for New England Tony Windsor announced last week that availability of fixed wireless access in areas outside the township had been pushed up the schedule thanks to the agreement he struck with Prime Minister Julia Gillard to allow her to form government after the last election.

The NBN rollout was changed to favour regional areas and a cross-subsidy was introduced to ensure country people would pay the same as those in the city, albeit for a slower service.

NBN Co.’s Holly Hearne, senior advisor, media relations, said NBN’s wholesale price to internet service providers (ISPs) was the same regardless of whether access was via fibre, fixed wireless or satellite. It is then up to the ISPs to offer competitive packages.

Tenterfield was not included in the latest round of three-year roll-out plans for fibre, meaning construction of the network won’t begin until at least 2015.

Fixed wireless uses cellular technology similar to current mobile telephone services, and will use existing communication towers to house the fixed wireless facility where possible. New towers would be subject to council development application approval and community consultation.

Unlike the mobile phone system, however, where the service standard changes depending on how many users are moving into and out of the area, the “cell” serves a fixed number of premises promising greater consistency on the speed and quality of service.

Although not approaching the speeds of fibre-based access, at 12Mbps, fixed wireless represents an improvement on current standards at eight times the speeds offered by ADSL connections and more than 150 times faster than those still struggling with dial-up.

NBN Co. is yet to map out areas to be covered by the cells but once the facility is in place, home and business owners can nominate to connect to the NBN via the free installation of a 45cm square outdoor antenna cabled to a socket within the premises. They will then have a choice of NBN packages offered by accredited ISPs.

Those out of range of even the fixed wireless network will have to fall back on satellite installations, but the good news is that access is available now, albeit via a slower interim satellite. Mr Preece said he has had several local customers take advantage of this in the past two to three months.

“You have be in a no or low signal area, and that applies to a large number of people in this region,” he said.

Satellite connections are currently offering speeds of up to six Mbps, but this is expected to increase to 12 Mbps once the government launches its dedicated NBN satellite in 2015, although Mr Preece is cautious in accepting this date.

Ms Hearne said NBN Co,, via its contractors, provides free standard installation for all network access although each premises will have only one option: fibre, fixed wireless or satellite. She said anyone qualifying for NBN satellite access now is unlikely to fall within a future fixed wireless cell.

While she admits that those in outlying areas may be put out at paying the same rates as townfolk for considerably slower speeds, she said speeds will be much faster than what they’re used to.

“It’s all relative,” she said.

“Even the interim satellite is six times the speed of the ABG (Australian Broadband Guarantee) satellite, four times the speed of ADSL and 75 times faster than dial-up.”

She said the network being rolled out incorporates the capacity to offer faster speeds as technologies evolve.