Slow internet in regional Australia creating a 'digital divide' and harming education and business

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Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Broadcast: 12/08/2015

Reporter: Nikki Tugwell

As more people use satellite internet services in regional and remote Australia, the system is struggling to keep up with demand and is causing 'shaping', where users go over their data limit and are charged big fees.


TONY JONES, PRESENTER: If you live hundreds of kilometres from the nearest town, home schooling your children is probably a necessity. The radio-based School of the Air for kids in remote areas was part of our national heritage. These days it's done over the internet. Sophisticated distance education services run by states and territories put the material online and children study in virtual classrooms talking to their friends on the net. Well, that's how it's supposed to work. The high-tech system is in fact horribly failing some people in remote parts of the country. There are simply too many households using satellite internet services and that means there's a limit on the download capacity they can buy. Go over that limit and they're charged big fees or their internet slows or stops. That slowdown is called shaping.

Well for people who rely on the net, this isn't just annoying, it's debilitating, it hurts home education and it hurts businesses. In just a few moments we'll talk to the Government's man in charge of providing top-class internet services. First, Nikki Tugwell investigates the problem.

JOY MCCLYMONT: We balance a workload of managing school by distance education and also a grazing business. ... Because I had so many children that were really little when I started school with my eldest, we just thought it would be easier and more convenient to convert our back veranda to the schoolroom.

NIKKI TUGWELL, REPORTER: For Joy McClymont and her children, this is a schoolroom away from school and what makes it possible is the internet.

LOUDY MCCLYMONT, STUDENT: It's like you're in your classroom, just on the computer with all your friends and classmates on there, as well.

NIKKI TUGWELL: But if the internet makes this remote education possible, when it fails, it causes serious problems.

JOY MCCLYMONT: Sometimes within the curriculum, there's a video that they have to watch in order to complete an activity or a piece of assessment, so it's quite disruptive when that video can't be viewed because of the internet being inaccessible.

ELKA MCCLYMONT, STUDENT: So it's not that fun when the video stops. And so sometimes I can't really see the screen, what I'm doing 'cause it goes off and takes a long time to load.

LOUDY MCCLYMONT: Yeah. And it comes on half through the lesson sometimes.

JOY MCCLYMONT: Not every day is brilliant, whether we've got the internet or not, but just that slight bit of disruption can actually throw us off schedule for days and weeks.

NIKKI TUGWELL: Interim satellite dishes were installed when the NBN was introduced, but as more people signed up, the loads became heavier and the service slowed.

JOANNA GIBSON, WILGENA STATION, NORTH-WEST SA: There was 48,000 places available and they sold many more places than that. The service has been so oversubscribed that people now have had their internet usage cut back to 20 gigabytes a month, and that is, if they go over a certain amount, their service is suspended for the rest of the month and this is absolutely devastating for families that educate their children via distance education because they've got no other option or no other way to access their schooling.

AINSLEY MCARTHUR: My husband and I run a big grazing enterprise. We're a family-operated business. We're raising - we have six children.

BOY: We get to go out in the paddock and look after the cattle and stuff.

AINSLEY MCARTHUR: It's like 120 kilometres to the nearest high school. It's just not an option.

ROB MCARTHUR: There's three currently doing school of distance education, so all of their lessons now are via the internet, which is good, but it's also - yeah, there's a lot of lumps to iron out.

AINSLEY MCARTHUR: We can't access the satellite at the moment. The interim satellite's reserved for those who have no internet access, so we are able to pick up a mobile broadband signal. That's costing us at the moment for our data $480 a month.

NIKKI TUGWELL: When people have used up their monthly data allowances, they're shaped, which means their connection speed is slowed right down. For people trying to educate their children online, this process can be deeply distressing.

TRISH MCKENZIE, CUNNAMULLA, SOUTH-WEST QUEENSLAND: In the middle of a drought and the internet goes down, it's just one more thing. It's just you don't need any extra hassles in life and you're trying your hardest to do the best by your children because that's the most important thing in your life is to educate your kids.

KERRY WILLIAMS: We feel a bit like society's pushing on and leaving us behind. A couple of years ago when the NBN Interim Satellite Service scheme came in, we were really excited about that because it meant updated equipment, it meant a larger data allowance and a faster internet. That was OK for a little while, but what we found is that the schools become 100 per cent reliant on online delivery of lessons and the curriculum, so everything's downloaded off the internet. So what we found was that we were using up our 20 gigs before - well before the end of the month. And when that happens, the internet gets shaped and so we get slowed right down to pretty much unusable internet.

NIKKI TUGWELL: Split living arrangements are the only option for some families who can't access the online education curriculum.

KERRY WILLIAMS: I've been going over in my head whether I should move to town, which obviously splits up the family. My children don't want that. They don't want mum and dad in different places. I don't want that, my husband doesn't. But at the end of the day, we have to work out what's best for everyone and to be able to educate our children.

AINSLEY MCARTHUR: Sadly, for our communities it's meant that the mothers move to town and living, so, mum's spending five days in town in alternative accommodation so the children can be educated and dad's at home running the place.

NIKKI TUGWELL: You can see the teacher up on the screen, is that right?

HENRY SLADE, STUDENT: Ah, no, you can't, because when - like, the teacher might use a camera, but when she does, she normally drops out 'cause of the bad connection.

LISA SLADE: Just knowing that we've got to wait for another year before the long-term satellite's launched. You know, we all thought back when the interim satellite was launched, that that would be the great white hope. We all kind of jumped aboard and it was fabulous for a little bit and then as it congested, it slowed down and it's nearly worse than when we had telephone internet through the telephone line.

NIKKI TUGWELL: The impact on families and communities is a concern for many in remote areas.

LISA SLADE: Some people are broken. It's a real mental health issue. It's so frustrating in every aspect, the effect that it has across not only the children's schooling, but like you said, the business side of things. It really is a serious issue for lots of people out there.

AINSLEY MCARTHUR: The vibrancy of the community is disappearing. It's almost like a second-class world.

KERRY WILLIAMS: It is hard to get people to work out there and we need families out there growing food to feed people.

JOY MCCLYMONT: Our quality of life is actually determined by whether we do and pay that bill, whether we engage with that on our lesson, whether the children learn to spell. And all of those things have actually become a focus of technology. Now, because sometimes that's not possible to engage with, we actually start thinking that that's a reflection on our own performance and our own children.


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