The Federal Government has announced six ‘blackspot’ regions that will be listed for broadband backhaul builds come September this year. Communications minister Stephen Conroy has called for submissions from Tenders with the successful applicant to receive $250 million for the National Broadband Network backhaul in these areas.

The regions scheduled to receive the broadband Backhaul are South West Gippsland in Victoria, Darwin in the NT, Geraldton in Western Australia, Broken Hill in NSW, Victor Harbour in South Australia along with Emerald and Longreach in QLD.

Stephen Conroy went on to say that the National Broadband Network backbone infrastructure developments will not be limited to these locations and subject to the first tender, further locations will be announced later in the year.

The NBN backhaul commencement is expected to kickstart the first of approximately 25,000 local jobs that will be directly initiated by the National Broadband Network rollout throughout the course of the 8 year project.