Councils line up for $24m tech help

Six councils remain in the running for part of the $24 million in funding the Government has made available to help councils provide communities with faster broadband services, the head of the digital strategy says.

The project - called Broadband Challenge - is designed to help partnerships deliver high-speed connectivity for urban and regional centres and address the lack of access to rural and under-served communities.

Peter Macauley, project manager for the digital strategy, said no councils so far qualified for funding because the process was still going on.

The Government was working through due diligence on the applications, said Macauley.

He said the whole strategy had been on target until May 16, when the submission were due.

"It has been a few weeks delayed, but we are not off the track," Macauley said.

"I would rather they took the time to work through it all rather than rush the decision."

Network provider companies including Telecom, Vector and CityLink have advised the councils, and in some cases have joined them on projects.

"The councils are not going to become telecommunication companies but will host network services," he said.

"The reality is that the seed funding is like putting in place venture capital and looking for parallel funding."

Councils did not need to know how a telecommunications company worked because the aim of the seed funding was to trigger partnerships with companies that provided network cable.

To meet the criteria for funding, local bodies did not have to prove that they would meet meet speeds of a gigabit per second in their application.