Regional Telecommunications Review - Short Online Submissions
Full name: Helen Kay
Date received: 14 July 2015
Chapter 1: How does demand for telecommunications services inform the Review?
Please comment on how your reliance on telecommunications in regional Australia differs from urban
areas.
Our mobile coverage is limited, our internet is very slow, satellite, and not cheap. There are
not a huge range of internet options available, the satellite is through NBN and subsidies help
get it installed but then you are locked in with few choices on plans. There are way too many
blackspots for the mobile, which is inconvenient and also not safe. We live on a farm and can
only make calls from certain parts of the farm. We rely on the internet for checking markets
and various other things, as well as online auctions for cattle, our internet makes many of
these options unusable.
Chapter 2: How are telecommunications services in regional, rural and remote Australia
delivered?
Please comment on the delivery of services for example over fixed networks, mobile networks or
satellite.
Our home line has had several occasions in the last few months where it has not worked for
several days, it appears the exchange has failed as neighbours also lost their land lines. In the
house you can only use the mobile standing up near the kitchen window. My husband has to
stand on the top of his ute, or on silos, or on one leg on a strainer post to get reception. The
internet, as already mentioned is very slow, just loading this survey has taken ages. The
internet is even slower in cloudy wether or rain. Not sure if this is part of it but the digital TV
also fails regularly in cloudy/wet wether.
Chapter 3: How are services being used in regional, rural and remote Australia?
Please comment on how telecommunication services are being used for example, interacting with
government, education, health or running a business.
Many of the things that we could do online we are not able to due the the pages timing out. I
tried to sign up to do the BAS but couldn't, every time I use the australia.gov website it is
slow and often time outs. I am a teacher and my students email regularly for help, they send
a photo of their work but sometimes I cannot see it as it will not load. We run a farming
business so do use the internet for many things but the access limits us. Our children are not
able to use educational videos on the internet due to the speed and the size of our plan,
more and more schools are using google docs and this is very difficult with our internet.
Chapter 4: Consumer safeguards
Please provide your views on current consumer safeguards and what should be considered in the
future.
Not sure what is meant by this. If it is about receiving grants to install satellites, as we have
done in the past, there should be more flexibility in terms of providers and the types of plans
they offer. We have had other companies offer to change us but they don't really understand
what we have, we get conflicting stories about how to improve the speed of the internet.
There should be information that makes it easy to understand the download speeds for each
plan (even satellite/modem) so that company representatives can't try to sell you a speed
they cannot deliver. The choices for data plans are limited, there does not seem to be
consistency between people in town and out if town. There should be a minimum set of
standards for data usage and price.
Other comments
Please provide any other comments.
Summing up, mobile coverage is very poor, internet slow and choices for plans is very limited.
This is a problem regularly discussed with our neighbours, we are always asking and
comparing experiences. It is also disappointing that this submission was not widely known
about. We only heard about it on the radio on the way home today and it is due tomorrow,
not sure who is supposed to inform people of such submissions but it is not good enough hat
it was not better publicised.