THE internet may have transformed the way the world does business, but thousands of people in regional Queensland towns feel they are being left behind.
Kooralbyn resident Renee Barlow is one those them.
Ms Barlow runs two creative photography businesses, writes and publishes community and cultural-focused Rimshot Magazine.
She said unreliable internet was holding back her own career and disadvantaging small towns like Kooralbyn trying to invigorate their economies their own way.
Kooralbyn, about an hour’s drive south of Brisbane, is not slated to be hooked up to the National Broadband Network until at least 2018.
The region is a perfect storm for its long-suffering residents, not considered regional enough to qualify for satellite NBN but too isolated and too insignificant for Telstra to consider updating ageing infrastructure.
The town runs off a single exchange that long ago reached capacity, forcing new residents to wait up to six months for a port to open up.
With a career that relies so heavily on technology, Mr Barlow feels the effects of poor internet access more than most.
“I can’t tell you the amount of times I’ve gone and done a shoot, come home to upload the images to send to my clients and the internet has dropped out or is so slow I simply cannot complete the process.”
Ms Barlow said when she cannot get images to clients, she does not get paid and it lowers the chance clients will call on her again.
“It makes me look unprofessional to clients and it’s not an excuse they want to hear. The internet here is incredibly slow and incredibly unreliable to the point I’ve considered moving closer to Brisbane.”
Ms Barlow said opportunity for growth in regional towns is being lost to poor internet access, particularly in regional areas that rely on their entrepreneurial spirit to survive where opportunities are few and far between.
“It’s absolutely ridiculous that we are in this position, and I think people would be surprised how reliable internet would help towns like ours.”
Ms Barlow expects internet speeds to be a hot topic at this month’s Grow Qld Forum in Beaudesert on April 14.