Report on Broome Consumer Consultation Meeting, 11 November 2003
The meeting was held at a conference room at the Mangrove Hotel at 5pm on 11 November 2003. Participants were advised that this consultation process is supported by funding from the Department of Communications, IT and the Arts.
Participants began by mentioning their own interests and use of the Internet. Their range of experience covered technical and managerial telecommunications provision, Telecentre coordination, IT provision and support in various academic institutions - local and in remote centres, shire government, lecturing, teaching and accounting. Several TAFE students came along to observe, and comments were also offered by a health services administrator who was unable to attend the meeting.
The Internet is now fundamental to remote regions, more so than in metropolitan areas with many more communication options. The discussion ranged widely over issues with performance, high-speed availability, educational requirements, specific regional problems, open standards, infrastructure, user understanding, continuing education for IT professionals, and the growing incorrect assumption that everyone now has fast access.
Usage of the Internet
- The main Internet activity for almost all attendees is email, followed by using it to gather information that is otherwise difficult or impossible to obtain locally.
- Study, education, research, IT support and locating technical documentation are major uses. Other common activites are travel bookings, banking, shopping, stockmarket trades, games, and obtaining drivers and software.
- Video conferencing was very important, due to the high cost of flying to remote areas - this was becoming vital in teaching and nursing.
- One unusual instance was the provision of an online radio server offering streaming audio broadcasts, see www.javoradio.com.
- It `reduces the remoteness of the world' for travellers or people with family overseas.
- Most importantly for the Kimberley, it is one of the best means of information on approaching cyclones - reports, warnings, tracks, images. (Except dependent upon the power of course, which is turned off or can be lost when cyclones are near.)
Connectivity and Speed
- About one fifth of attendees now have ADSL, depends on location within Broome area. There are few high-speed options, but at least the situation is better than Derby, which has no choices at all. Broome's Cable Beach sub-exchange is due to be upgraded to ADSL in January 2004, which will hopefully bring a lot more ADSL connectivity to the town.
- ADSL is more reliable during power problems due to generators at the exchanges, but takeup is generally slow even at the new exchanges with sufficient ports.
- Slow dialup speeds are a major problem, frequent drop-outs, great frustration for students - hard to keep them interested if everything takes too long to download. Even 56k modems are too slow. Variations in line quality can be handled by high-quality modems like Maestro's Woomera and 3Com's USR, but they are generally too expensive for home users.
- Telstra/government satellite systems are available, but not broadband - 33.6 to 128k dedicated downlink, but shared uplink, sometimes more congested. Very expensive compared to ADSL.
- Atmospheric conditions and latency are major problems with satellite, especially with virtual private networks, 2-3 seconds delay, video very difficult.
- Satellite is wonderful, has opened up the outback, but the need is always outstripping demand.
- Slowness generally is a problem, especially from large attachments - they should be put on websites, to download at less congested times, or on CDs.
- Efficient design and formats of graphics is not understood or taught widely. Rarely compressed, but compression should be automatic, not an option (whose usage probably isn't well understood anyway).
- Many websites and browsers do not adhere to standards. Vendors may think it gives them an advantage but it locks people out and causes frustration. Free browsers that are highly standards-compliant are Mozilla and Opera.
- Open source software and standards are very important for accessibility, reliability and security. Broome Shire Council runs on Linux servers.
Remote Issues
- Recent trials with deaf people in remote communities - sign language over video - people were happy, readable with connectivity as low as 128kb.
- Some pricing structures are higher for remote regions, though this is changing.
- Pressure must be kept up on politicians to keep improving remote access, though it has improved a lot due to government desire to sell Telstra - but what happens if it's sold?
- The Universal Service Obligation has been very good, and so long as it keeps up with the realities of remote issues it will be fine. But the guaranteed connection speed should be higher than 19.2kbps, as actual throughput due to line noise etc is usually much lower than this anyway.
- the Department of Industry and Resources report, Telecommunications Needs Assessment, was recommended to the meeting as a source of useful statistics on the region: Telecommunications Needs Assessment.
General Comments
- More resilient infrastructure is needed for dialup - throughput and dropout still a major difficulty.
- It's not that expectations are unrealistically high either, these are real problems - the performance baseline should be higher.
- The Internet Assistance Program at http://iap.dcita.gov.au was discussed as a means of testing connectivity problems.
- Spam is not seen as a major problem so far - ISPs appear to be quite successful at filtering it out.
- Spyware and worms are a growing concern - gathering information sereptitiously, stealing bandwidth that schools have to pay for - unfriendly, dishonest. A good spyware detection and removal program is Spybot. The vast majority of worms run only on Microsoft Windows systems, and to avoid them people must use updated virus scanners, or move to a platform without those vulnerabilities (Unix systems such as Linux).
- ISDN is a good potential high-speed alternative, approximately the cost of ADSL and is now untimed.
- Connectivity is a lot better than previously for Broome. In remoter regions things are more difficult.
- User education is a major ongoing requirement - rights, responsibilities, how to use efficiently, understanding what to do - who do people turn to? The Internet is the carrot that gets people generally to learn technology. Even among 25-30 year-old people only about 50% locally have Internet experience.
- The Telecentre Network is a highly successful WA program providing shopfront access to Internet, telecommunications and office equipment for local people, visitors and students in remote regions. Broome Telecentre is the busiest in the state, with eight thousand people through the centre this year, and it's always extremely high pressure to keep up with demand and resources.
- There is great frustration at the lack of IT learning opportunities here - the cities have frequent seminars, experts, people to talk to about new technology and problem solving, but these people rarely come to Broome, there's much less chance to share knowledge, have someone to talk to. More education is needed - there's no reason why some of the large technical conferences couldn't come to Broome as many attendees have to fly to other cities anyway.
- There are still major problems in getting city and government centres to understand restrictions in remote areas - example of a program of grants for regional and remote nurses: the only way the application form was provided was a large PDF over the Internet - the government body refused to send it in the mail! But rural nurses often don't even have Internet facilities, let alone the bandwidth necessary to download large files.
- The assumption has crept in that if it works in Sydney it will work everywhere. This is a major potential problem in getting government facilities online - the offline access methods must not be forgotten in the rush.
Kate Lance, Executive Director ISOC-AU
11 November 2003