These days, just about everything is being done online. But new research highlights how hard that's making life for thousands of Australians still living without phone and internet.
A national snapshot shows internet access is improving overall, but half of Australia's Aboriginal communities still don't have phone reception.
The good news is evidence of an overall improvement to internet access, with the number of people able to get online increasing from 74 per cent in 2022 to 86 per cent.Just over half of remote Aboriginal communities still do not have mobile services"There is a lot of good news here — we have communities now with wi-fi mesh networks, which is proving a game-changer, and there's evidence more people using the internet regularly," Dr Featherstone said.
And remote Aboriginal community residents are among the worst impacted, at a time when services linked to banking, government and employment are increasingly moving online. "They still go in physically to the bank branch to make withdrawals, partly because they're scared of scammers — and I don't blame them."There is evidence the digital divide is not just inconvenient, but potentially dangerous.
"But it's also dangerous — how do you get in touch with people if you're in trouble, whether it's domestic violence or an accident out on the road?"
Digital Divide Closing The Gap Mobile Coverage Mobile Access Remote Communities Aboriginal Communities Closing The Digital Divide
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