Living just a few kilometres out of town means Penelope Fenley endures what she describes as appalling internet access.
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Not only is it too slow and too unreliable it costs many times more than consumers pay for a far superior service in urban areas.
And its not as if Mrs Fenley is located in a remote part of the Australian bush her family’s beef cattle property is only 10kms from Merriwa in the Upper Hunter.
She is frustrated by the legislative rules that condemn rural families like hers to such a poor service. “Internet access is a handicap to so many rural and regional families,” said Mrs Fenley.
As vice-president of the Hunter River Group of the Country Women’s Association she is keen to advocate for changes to enable people throughout rural and regional areas to have access to the best quality internet.
To improve their telecommunication connectivity she and her husband Kim spent $1000 buying a smart signal booster and installing an aerial on the roof so they could receive mobile phone coverage in their home.
“We have to keep the telephone landline because its 100 per cent reliable because even spending that amount of money doesn’t guarantee coverage,” she said.
For $50/month they receive 20Gb of satellite broadband,however its slowness and unreliability is extremely frustrating.
“Automatic software updates chew all the data before you know it and we can’t run a rural business with this sort of internet capacity,” Mrs Fenley said.
When their grandchildren visit they are unable to do their homework if it involves any internet research.
The Fenley’s daughter lives on a property at Bunnan and her situation is very similar to her parents and particularly difficult for her school aged children.
They can’t access the internet for their education and that is appalling, she said.
“Our priorities are all wrong in this country – rural people want to embrace technology and internet business but are stymied by internet access,” she said.
“We need to change the legislative cap on our internet access and perhaps question why its more important for Qantas travellers to download movies than children in rural areas being able to do their homework.”
One thing that really galls Mrs Fenley is the constant promotions on ABC television telling people to watch shows on IVIEW.
“Well we can’t we don’t have enough download or speed – its really frustrating to have that constantly rubbed in our faces,” she said.
CWA State President, Annette Turner says current infrastructure and service levels are not sufficient, with gaps in mobile reception and internet reliability, cost and bandwidth.
“Rural customers are paying an average of $9.27 per gigabyte, with some consumers paying up to $20 per gigabyte. For satellite users the costs are even higher — an average of $15.96 per gigabyte, with some paying up to $70 per gigabyte. Download speeds are typically 10 times slower; and users are subject to data limits of just 75 gigabytes per month as part of a fair use policy,” explained Annette.
“With today’s data-hungry websites and devices, limits are quickly reached. Even after rationing, families can fall short of being able to conduct Skype calls with medical experts, perform basic business tasks and access education resources. This is a real issue for regional and rural Australians and in some cases greatly impacts their day to day life in a way that would just not happen in a capital city.”