NBN tendering announcement expected soon: Conroy

Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, expects NBN Co will make an announcement about rollout tendering processes soon, after it suspended them in April.

NBN Co told 14 companies vying for a contract to lay the national broadband network's fibre cables that their proposals were too expensive and indefinitely halted tendering.

When asked if there was any resolution to the problem in sight, Senator Conroy said an "announcement" was on the cards.

"The negotiations will take place directly between NBN Co and an individual contractor," he told ABC Radio on Wednesday."... I'd anticipate there will be an announcement soon."

Senator Conroy's comments came as he and Prime Minister Julia Gillard prepared to switch on the first Australian mainland site for the $36 million NBN in Armidale, in northern NSW, on Wednesday.

Opposition communications spokesperson, Malcolm Turnbull, said Labor was delivering fast broadband at too high a cost.

He said there were other cheaper ways to achieve the same result, for instance bringing fibre within a kilometre of homes and using the existing copper network to bridge the gap.

"You can deliver very, very fast broadband for at least half the cost, if not more, of fibre to the home," Turnbull told ABC Radio.

Liberal backbencher, Simon Birmingham, wished the residents of Armidale the best of luck with the roll-out.

"But there are millions of other Australians who are without metro-equivalent broadband services," he told reporters in Canberra.

"The government (should have) focused on delivering something that people actually need rather than trying to create this nirvana of speeds."

Nationals Senate leader, Barnaby Joyce, said the roll-out of the NBN in the New England electorate of independent MP Tony Windsor was telling.

Windsor and fellow independent, Rob Oakeshott, played a fundamental role in the "Greens-independent-Labor alliance", Senator Joyce said.

"They get to the front of the political church in a big white fluffy dress saying I don't know how I got here (or what) to say next," he told reporters.

"We don't need this stupid little dance that goes on all the time with the independents."

Gillard rejected suggestions the rollout in Windsor's electorate was a decision of her government, saying it was made by NBN Co.

"What they wanted to do was to have release sites of different types around the country so they could learn some lessons about the broader rollout," she told Tamworth's 2TM.

Armidale was one of those sites as was a growth corridor in Adelaide.

Liberal backbencher, Paul Fletcher, a former executive of telecommunications company Optus, said the NBN was running late and few people were using the service.

"Only a handful of people, less than a thousand, have a service today on the NBN," he told Sky News.

The government had delivered "virtually nothing" for a cost to taxpayers of $56 billion.

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