Review Article: Telecommunications and rural and remote Australia

Perry Share

Available free from AUSTEL PO Box 7443 St Kilda Road, Melbourne 3004

Canberra: AGPS, 1991 126pp ISBN 0 644 14585 4 Now out of print, but possibly available from AGPS bookshops.

Available from CIRCIT, 1st floor, 4 Riverside Quay, South Melbourne 3205.

Price $25, $5 to individual researchers, free to students

Review Article: Telecommunications and rural and remote Australia

An adequate telecommunications infrastructure is essential for the economic and social well-being, growth and development of rural and remote communities into the 21st century. The growing emphasis on the services industries and, in particular, the greater information content of goods and services has increased requirements for quality telecommunications. In view of the importance of rural and remote business to Australia's national welfare, it is . . . vital that rural and remote communities have adequate access to quality telecommunications services (AUSTEL, 1992: 52)

Noble sentiments but . . . what is really happening to (tele)communications in rural Australia? Change is everywhere and its effects and directions may be contradictory. Australia Post recently told me that my local post office was unprofitable and so 'under review'. Like many other small country settlements Coolamon (NSW - pop 1000) may lose its Post Office, to be replaced by a private enterprise agency. Is this a good or bad outcome for the people of the town?

Like most country towns, Coolamon does not benefit from SBS TV or Radio JJJ despite the claims of these networks to be heard 'across Australia'. But the townspeople can choose from amongst four TV stations, a community radio station, a local commercial station, three ABC radio stations ( FM, Radio National and Regional), a daily newspaper, metropolitan dailies from three capital cities and access to the mobile phone network. The future holds out hope of JJJ and possibly a commercial FM station. This is a fairly extensive menu by international standards.

While more remote areas (and many larger rural centres) do not have such a diversity of services, the fax, the satellite dish and the ubiquity of Telecom mean that rural and remote Australia are now linked to the world like never before. But what of the future? Can country Australia keep up with the burgeoning information economy and grasp the opportunities it offers? This is the theme that underlies the three works discussed here.

Telecommunications and rural development

Hudson argues that rural areas are being strongly affected by the shift to an information economy. There have been dramatic changes in both the technology of telecommunications and the regulatory environment under which the information economy operates.

In the US only 9% of rural workers are employed on farms: most work - like their urban counterparts - in the broadly defined services sector, which includes wholesale and retail businesses, other private services (legal, financial, personal service & c) and government (education, welfare, health, transport & c.). Unfortunately, suggests Hudson, 'even as rural economies become more dependent on services, they lag behind urban economies in their ability to exploit a national economic trend' (p3).

Key factors here are distance and time. In an economy where speed is increasingly important, the comparative isolation of rural areas can be a serious handicap: especially for manufacturing or personal service industries. Only if a rural area can offer compensations (eg low wages) can it seriously compete. But, argues Hudson, when the economy is information and people based, there is no inherent reason why those in rural areas cannot participate equally. But good telecommunications networks are essential.

Like a good road system (see Cheers, 1993) effective telecommunications linkages have many benefits for rural and remote areas, including the potential for economic growth and better quality social services. For public and private enterprises alike, effective networks can lead to improved quality, productivity and efficiency and help to reduce costs. A good telecommunications system can also help to foster a sense of community and cultural identity.

Hudson says we need to develop 'an adequate telecommunications infrastructure based on an understanding of rural development needs and priorities'. If this does not happen, rural areas will face a bleak future in the information economy. What might this mean in practice?

Rural telecommunications: needs and potential

• universal single party touchtone service
• service of sufficient quality to carry voice, fax and data
• charging rates based on community of interest
• adequate emergency services
• access to optional information services (enhancements to the basic telephone service)

Hudson outlines some of the factors determining the quality of and access to telecommunications services. These include level of income, community size and geographic isolation. Similar constraints have shaped the development of telecommunications services for rural Australians. Reading Hudson's discussion of the US regulatory environment, it is clear that US rural subscribers have not been well served by the multiplicity of small, competing phone systems. For example, a significant number of country people in the US are still on party phone lines and there are transmission deficiencies on a significant number of rural lines. There may be a message here for Australia as it moves into a more competitive telecommunications environment.

The new technology offers many new possibilities to rural dwellers. Familiar ones are information for primary producers, for example on the weather, futures markets and niche marketing opportunities. Australia has also had a long history of distance education based on the innovative use of telecommunications technologies. Technology provides advantages for some rural businesses: for example chemists and hardware shops can be linked to national distributors. This helps them to keep their prices competitive with urban and regional centres. In the US this has allowed for the development of discount stores and supermarkets in rural areas.

Williamson (1990) has suggested ways in which people in regional and rural areas have been able to use the business potential offered by new telecommunications technologies. These include the decentralisation of legal practices and the contracting out of computing services from metropolitan based businesses. A similar theme is taken up by Hudson, who cites the example of Washington DC, where all telephone operator services for are now operated from rural West Virginia!. She argues that it is possible for 'footloose' businesses to relocate to rural areas, making use of available technologies such as fax, notebook and palmtop computers, teleconferencing and videoconferencing. One could also add mobile phones - where the networks in Australia are particularly advanced.

The burgeoning of telemarketing (also known as home shopping) has led to the generation of jobs in some rural areas (in Nebraska and Iowa). These states 'have become leading homes of telemarketing because of a relatively low cost and highly reliable workforce and high quality communications networks'. The recent introduction of interactive TV to Australia may offer similar possibilities. There is no reason why a national distribution centre could not be located in (for example) Wagga Wagga, Bendigo or Toowoomba.

In order for such potential to be tapped, Hudson argues that 'the basic goal should be to provide in rural and remote areas affordable access to telecommunications and information services comparable to those in urban areas'. To this end she suggests the integration of telecommunications and regional development and provides pertinent recommendations for legislators and policymakers; regulators; development agencies; and telecommunication providers. Nearly all of her recommendations make sense in the Australian context.

It would have been nice to see Hudson suggest more specific links to Australian experience for, as the article abstract suggests, 'many of these issues are particularly relevant to Australia as it implements its telecommunication reform program'.

Phones in rural Australia

Australians living outside the capital cities are being forced to cut back on their use of the phone, or to turn to alternative communications technologies, because of high costs and falling incomes (Communications Update, 1993:17)

Moyal (1989) and others have shown that for many rural people, telephones and telecommunications services are more than just instruments of communication. They are about maintaining personal, family and community networks and identities. They are of particular importance to rural businesses and to country women.

By international standards Australia has a high quality and reasonably priced telecommunications network and generally lacks the sorts of problems alluded to in Hudson's paper. Historically a system of cross-subsidy has meant that even the most remote areas of the continent have been linked to the national telecommunications network. Telecom's Rural Remote Area Program (1984-1992) involved the expenditure of $530m to provide 45,000 phones in rural and remote Australia (a cost of $11,700 per phone). Compared with the USA transmission quality is high and compared with most countries of Europe prices are very low.

However as a fairly recent nationwide survey of country women showed (OSW, 1988) the cost and quality of telecommunications services, particularly phone services, remain a vibrant issue for rural people. A recent study by AUSTEL, the telecommunications regulatory body, sought to examine some of the unmet telecommunication needs of rural dwellers. These include, above all:

• the telecommunication needs of remote Aboriginal settlements, particularly in the light of the outstation / 'homelands' movement. The report points out that in remote areas about 60% of the population identify as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander
• improved transmission quality to cope with the demands of new technologies such as fax, videoconferencing and data transfer
• the demand for enhanced services - eg in relation to the delivery of health and education services

The AUSTEL report was based on wide-ranging consultation and on evidence drawn from existing reports, particularly work done by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission and CIRCIT. A number of issues in relation to the quality of service were identified:

submitters to the investigation identified congestion, call drop-out, noisy lines and repair times as the major quality of service concerns in rural and remote areas (p37)

While Telecom's statistics purport to show that such problems are rare, the report concludes that they may be serious enough to be of considerable concern to some rural/remote users.

In relation to the call for enhanced services, the report notes concern amongst rural and remote customers that many of the enhanced services or features commonly available to metropolitan customers may not arrive in rural or remote areas for some time (p43). At the same time it is pointed out that good telecommunications are particularly important to the economic and social development of rural areas - for example in the transport and tourism industries. The report notes the already high use of fax in rural areas (p48).

As pointed out by Hudson, telecommunications have the potential to be of great benefit for the education and training of country people. The AUSTEL report suggests that telecommunications advances 'have the potential to increase access to, and participation in, education and training and to facilitate the provision of higher quality education and training programs'. The Tanami network, which allows (amongst other things) for the development and promotion of Aboriginal art, is an excellent example of this potential.

The report sounds some ominous warnings which reflect the new telecommunications policy environment. There appears to be a real danger that rural and remote Australia may get left behind in the great Telecom/Optus war. AUSTEL concludes that it will need to keep monitoring the Standard Telephone Service in rural and remote areas to make sure that consumers: 'share in benefits of new competitive environment'. Innovative steps will have to be taken to respond to the unmet telecommunications needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. It is not made clear how these will be met in a context shaped by increasingly commercial considerations.

In the words of AOTC (alias Telecom):

timely network rollout and modernisation require considerable financial resources which are finite - and increasingly so in competition. This means AOTC's financial resources must be carefully allocated to maximise their effective use and constraints should be minimised (AUSTEL, p17)

Translated into English, this means that the sort of funding that has been invested into rural and remote Australian telecommunications is unlikely to be maintained.

Nevertheless, costs and quality do remain serious issues for many country people, in particular as the majority of calls are not untimed local calls but pastoral, STD or operator connected. A New England survey published in Communications Update shows average rural bills to be $310 per quarter. It appears that the 'rural crisis' has had a significant effect on rural telecommunications: the survey shows that rural people are reducing phone usage and, in some cases, replacing the phone with that reliable standby - the UHF radio. While sacrificing privacy and sound quality, the costs are much lower.

The introduction of 'competition' between Telecom and Optus has been hailed in an orgy of promotion (which has made Telecom Australia's second biggest advertiser) as a benefit to all Australians. However competition is unlikely to benefit rural/remote dwellers. Non-metropolitan areas are expensive to service and are not seen as an important market compared to the inter-capital trunk routes and international services. Based on an analysis of phone pricing trends, Communications Update concludes that:

the whole emphasis of telecommunications policy has shifted so that the phone (and its enhancements) are seen, not as a service to which every Australian has a right, but as part of a system where the volume of calls and proximity to major routes, rather than need, are the primary determinants of competitive pricing strategies (p17)

Telecottage industries?

Telecottages, claim the authors,

have the potential to overcome many of the traditional handicaps suffered by rural and remote communities. They enable rural communities to participate fully in the new information society which is emerging around the globe (p46)

The telecottage idea is a simple one: set up a community space that contains a linked selection of advanced telecommunications and computing equipment: perhaps a fax machine, a few PCs, some modems a printer and a photocopier. Employ an enthusiastic coordinator and hey presto! - a New Age cottage industry. Just this has happened in Scandinavia, the UK, Ireland, other parts of Europe, the USA and Canada. Australia's first 'telecentre' (focusing on Distance Education) was opened at Walcha (NSW) in July 1992, resplendent with fax, computers and teleconferencing equipment.

Of course the reality is far more complex than this, and this study provides a useful and timely survey of what has happened elsewhere; what it is that makes telecottages work; why they often fail; and what the limitations of the concept might be. Despite a constant appreciation of the potential barriers, the authors maintain a generally optimistic vision of this possible technological future.

In Europe the development of telecottages has been stimulated by concern over rural-urban population drift. This has led initially to government support for the telecottage concept, but (perhaps surprisingly) the most successful ventures seem to have been those based on private enterprise and local government. The authors stress that local ownership and involvement is the key. As with many other 'schemes' imposed on communities from the outside, telecottages without strong local input, no matter how well-intentioned their promoters or large the investment, tend to fail.

The Telecottages report provides much useful information, though inevitably the technical section has been rendered partly out-of-date by the rapidity of technological change. It gives costings for different sized operations: showing how the potential costs and gains can vary a great deal. It outlines possible benefits to rural and remote communities in the areas of education, employment and the provision of government information. It suggests that telecottages might provide unique employment opportunities for women in rural areas, but also warns that such work may not necessarily be skilled or well paid. The concept of a 'virtual city' in the bush is a nice idea (briefly explored) and there is a very useful chapter on Telecom's rural infrastructure which could be well combined with the AUSTEL report's crucial information on telecommunications in Aboriginal communities.

Conclusions

Heather Hudson suggests that

telecommunications may serve as a catalyst at certain stages of the rural development process, becoming particularly important when other innovations are introduced such as improved farming practices, lines of credit, incentives for decentralisation and diversification of the rural economic base

These are the sorts of issues and debates that are intimately tied up with the future of rural Australia. Telecommunications policy and practice incorporates them all: innovation; equity; participation; power; attitudes; employment; education; privatisation; market niches; population change; new technology. Rural Australia has always been significantly shaped by technological change, not least in the field of communications. These reports help to continue our exploration of these processes and, in particular the AUSTEL report, provide much useful background information. . I commend them to you, if you have an interest in this country's future rural development.

Additional References

Communications Update (1993) Telecommunications costs: the human dimension Communications Update 91, August

Moyal, A. (1989) Women and the telephone in Australia: a study prepared for Telecom Australia

OSW (Office for the Status of Women) Life has never been easy Report of the survey of women in rural Australia Canberra: AGPS

Williamson, B. (1990) Decentralisation of legal practices Rural Welfare Research Bulletin

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