We live in a pretty isolated area, which is great for soft releasing wildlife where they will be disturbed, as all wildlife generally are where people live, as little as possible. This area requires good internet coverage because we are over 100 kilometres from a fully functioning library and other things that people in the city, who have better if not great internet coverage and are close to all these information outlets, take for granted.
So more than any others, we need really good internet coverage and we have satellite, which is a Clayton's NBN. We are also some distance from the closest mains power, which of course is not the best option for power by a long shot and even if it wouldn't cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to connect to, is becoming even more expensive. So with a small solar power system, we have to turn things off, as we cannot leave things on standby or on all the time.
When we start our satellite modem, it takes at least 15, usually 20 minutes to connect. So the modem is on for 20 minutes before it's even sensible to turn on a computer, dragging power out of the deep cycle batteries. All this has been recounted to Malcolm Turnbull and Mitch Fifield who replaced him as telecommunications minister, with a small “m”.
It was the Abbott government that found the cheapest possible internet delivery system, and then found a couple of consulting firms that would declare it as being the best, and proceeded to install it for Australians. Made up mostly of a population that had no idea about what a good internet system was if they fell over it in their lounge room and no idea whatsoever what a really good system could do for the economy and people in general. Turnbull sold this system to people of Australia too easily and never again mentioned it in the election and Labor hardly touched on it either. Because it was not an issue for most Australians.
Turnbull was voted into being head of the country and Fifield took on the role of communications minister for a substandard system. Bought the wrong modems and thought he could sit back and everyone would be silly enough to just accept the catch cry, “the internet is slow, or down” with impunity and most did.
The satellite modems are rubbish and they can be tweaked to pick up the satellite signal faster, because after many letters of complaints Fifield did actually have them tweaked so they picked up the satellite signal after a few minutes. Still too long but it could be lived with. But that was soon replaced by the same old problem of waiting 20 minutes for the modem to pick up the signal. Fifield was not the man for the job, and after a while it was disclosed that technicians working for the NBN were not allowed to compare notes. Not allowed to even talk to one another. They being like most of the community wanted to keep their jobs so they obeyed.
This is just one of the side effects of our society, and no one wants to take up the subject, because politicians are not accountable. Some kind of inquiry will show them to be remiss, culpable of absolutely dumb, and nothing will ever be done. The issue with the satellite internet is just one such. They are like the rest of our society and yet we give them credence they don't deserve.
