The Federal Government has announced a $4.5 billion upgrade to the National Broadband Network, but the Electrical Trades Union says the project was “botched” from the start.

The union’s national secretary Allen Hicks told Jim Wilson he hoped this time, they’d get it right.

“This could have been done a long time ago and the disappointing part about this process is, consumers are ultimately going to pay more,” he said.

“We said this right at the beginning when they wanted to go to a mixed technology type broadband system.

“This is going to mean the consumers – if they want to get faster speeds – they are going to have to pay their network providers more to get access to that.

“If the government had done it correctly in the first instance, more Australians would have been enjoying higher broadband speeds and internet than they recently are.”

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Image: Getty