Submission in response to the 2021 Regional Telecommunications Review

GrainGrowers believes that farming families, rural businesses and their communities should have high quality, reliable and accessible telecommunication services. Be it landline, mobile or internet-based telecommunications, it is all vitally important to farming families and their businesses. Expansion of mobile coverage is critical to both the safety and wellbeing of grain growers and their businesses’ productivity. It is imperative that government and industry explore and consider new approaches to improving mobile coverage, including ways to incentivise and work with growers on improving their own connectivity. We must also ensure actual mobile coverage increases through the deployment of 5G and the phase out of the 3G network. Australian grain farmers operate in a highly technological environment, that is reliant upon technology requiring differing levels of connectivity to support the machinery, software and equipment. This environment must be complemented with a modern telecommunications policy framework that allows farmers and their communities to be at the forefront, not lagging behind.