RURAL and remote students are likely to see benefits from NBN Co’s new Sky Muster Plus product.
Isolated Children’s Parents’ Association (ICPA) president Wendy Hick said while the Sky Muster Education Services had allowed families with distance education students to pay for some extra data, sequestered for educational use, current plans make no special allowances for local, boarding or tertiary student’s data use.
“Assignments and research that students need to do is becoming more digital encompassing and requires more data,” she said.
Read more: Breakthrough for Sky Muster
”We’ve got boarding school children who at times aren’t coming home, or are going back early, in order to access the internet because they simply don’t have the data.
“You only get one service per premise – you are trying to balance business and personal use as well as schooling needs.”
Mrs Hick said Sky Muster Plus could help alleviate some of these issues.
“Sky Muster Plus plans should free up metered data for use by students in the household,” she said.
“The unmetering at this stage is web browsing, emails and software updates.
“The web browsing should at least allow students to look at what they need to for their assignments.”
Mrs Hick said said while Sky Muster Plus was not expected to be released until next year, her organisation was positive about the outcome.
“While it is still in the consultation phase, we are pretty excited,” she said.
“Remote education has been a focus during consultations with the NBN Regional Stakeholders Roundtable.
“They are also looking at public interest, education, health and emergency services also having provision under this.”
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