“That ICPA (Aust) continues to request the Minister for Communications to ensure all rural and remote students have adequate internet access regarding reliability, speed, quality, capabilities and cost of the service.”
Geographically isolated families rely on the internet for their educational needs. While expected data speeds, plan sizes and cost are continually improving, service reliability remains an issue. Currently some families are maintaining two different providers of internet, to ensure reliability. For example, nbn and Starlink, so if one drops out the other may still work. This is reflective of the historical unreliability of internet services, poor product and provider choices as well as large wait times for installation of hardware for new services, or repair of equipment. Families should not be having to pay for two internet connections due to the unreliable nature of internet connectivity in the bush. Or suffer long periods of not internet which affects their attendance and engagement at school.
Case Study
A family is using nbn and Starlink and rely on generated power (no access to mains power). Generator has tripped or surged, causing the modem to stop working on Starlink. Even when the modem is connected to a surge protector board. This has caused the internet service to not work until a replacement arrived, which has taken 3 weeks. In the interim the family were able to use their back up nbn service. If they hadn’t had that back up, the students would have had no access to internet. Similarly, during a previous wet season, the NBN dish was struck by lightning and couldn’t be fixed by the service provider for two months. It was this situation that led them to getting the Starlink service as backup.
