THREE National Broadband Network towers standing ready to provide fast internet in the Bendigo region are unlikely to come online for at least another 12 months.

The towers at Huntly, Goornong and Sedgwick were expected to start supplying up to 2000 homes and businesses with fast wireless broadband three months ago, but a planning tribunal decision has left them sitting idle.

A tower planned for Mt Camel, near Toolleen, was a “strategic” tower and would have transmitted a signal to the three in Bendigo.

VCAT knocked the tower back earlier this year however, after complaints from several nearby residents on visual amenity grounds.

The Bendigo Advertiser understands NBN Co has been searching for a new site, but no planning application has been lodged with Campaspe Shire Council.

Businesses in the Bendigo region have complained at seeing the towers but being unable to access the NBN, having to settle for download speeds far below the potential minimum of 25 megabits per second.

One business confirmed it was considering a number of options, including constructing its own fibre connection rather than wait for the towers to come online.

Homes and businesses on Bendigo’s northern and southern outskirts could have accessed the towers.

Campaspe Shire mayor Leigh Wilson said the hold-up was not just impacting Bendigo, but also small farming communities.

“They didn’t have a Plan B – there’s no alternative location for the tower,” he said.

“They are having to do all the investigations again.

“I’m still disheartened with VCAT’s decision. It’s just a tower, it’s not a dam or a mine or anything.”

Member for Bendigo Lisa Chesters described a “telecommunications crisis” in the Bendigo region as the wait for fast broadband continues.

The federal government released the National Broadband Network corporate plan for 2016 on Monday, detailing a cost blow out of $15 billion, with a final cost estimated at between $46 billion and $56 billion.

The plan included no further details of the NBN rollout in central Victoria.

In April this year, NBN Co announced 31,000 Bendigo homes and businesses would be included in a national rollout plan from September 2016.

The parts of Bendigo to be included in the plan were yet to be determined.

Ms Chesters said slow internet was holding central Victoria back.

“The uncertainty of the current government on the NBN has meant any developments of the NBN or ADSL have ceased and left many people without basic communications infrastructure around central Victoria,” she said.

Ms Chesters called on the federal government to return to the original NBN rollout plan of fibre to the premises.

iLoddon Mallee compiled a business case for NBN in the region, outlining a number of IT, design and engineering businesses that could benefit.

Bendigo Health was among the organisations to contribute to the business case, stating in-home monitoring devices and video consultations could stop rising healthcare costs.

Bendigo was left off the rollout list in 2013, but was again added in 2015.

In a statement, Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull said the NBN would have already been rolled out had the Coalition planned it.

“If Australia had pursued a more conventional approach such as the policies pursued in similar countries – where private companies did the job and taxpayers provided subsidies to support the rollout in uncommercial areas such as the bush – the upgrade to high speed broadband would probably already be complete, and certainly would have cost a lot less,” he said.