FARMERS and rural communities are being relegated to poor cousin status when it comes to mobile coverage and price, with virtually no coverage apart from Telstra in most rural areas.
Telstra purports to have coverage of 2.4 million square kilometres and because the others only have limited coverage if you want service from home to the farm and surrounding towns you only have one very expensive choice.
Although Telstra covers about a third of Australia's land mass there are still half a million Australians who can only use Telstra and a small few Optus, but tragically 230,000 rural people and farmers still have no mobile coverage.
Governments are injecting millions of taxpayer dollars into more mobile towers, which will increase the coverage, but limit us to Telstra in the main as the provider.
Farmers welcome Rod Simms from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) asking why, if public funds are used to build more towers, are not all companies allowed to put their equipment on towers?
Competition will drive down the cost, but other companies have not been prepared to spend the capital on mobile tower construction but are prepared to put their equipment on existing and new towers.
On my farm the copper network was up to date when horse and carts were used to take wool to market, but as a vehicle for carrying data for internet use it is hopelessly inadequate.
Consequently I get my internet on wireless, the same service that carries mobile phones, but it slows to glacial slow speed when all the kids come home from school until they go to bed at night.
There has been much excitement about the satellite service, but people who have it say it slows to snail’s pace on regular occasions.
Hopefully the new satellite coming on line in a few months might improve that, although past experience with the original satellite was very poor.
Telstra shareholders, of which I am one, will not like it, as it will bring urgently needed competition into our communication costs and no doubt they will be lobbying government to not allow roaming, but at the end of the day the telecommunications company requires a licence to operate.
Governments need to toughen up the licence and put in place a customer service guarantee as they have for telephones, so farmers do not continue to get slugged by as much as three times what city people pay for the same service.
Agriculture is an important contributor to national wealth, and digital communications help that production, so equity dictates farmers must be able to access competitive communication costs.
We can only hope the ACCC and farmers will force the Australian government to allow roaming so competition drives down costs.
