Remote farmers heaviest users of the net

New statistic have found that remote farms are less inclined to opt for high-speed fibre connections, which will be part of the NBN rollout but still access the internet more than metro farms.

The Australian bureau has recent release statistics that have found that compared to the city metro farms the more remote farming areas use the internet to a greater extent, although it is thought that there rural farms will not be interested in signing up for the super fast NBN fibre broadband that will soon become available.

It has been found that regional farmers that make up the ‘last 10 percent’ of the Australian population will probably not take up the high-speed fibre broadband connection that will be deployed by the NBN, although these regional and remote farms are more likely to run their business operations using internet connections then farms that can be found closer to cities, according to the report call ‘Use of the Internet on Farms.’

In 2007-08 it was found that business operation using the internet was used by 66 percent of all Australian farms. It was also found that 34 percent of farms had no access at all to the internet, 17 percent still accessed the internet using a dial-up service and the amount of farms that used broadband connections came to 48 percent. It was, however, found that different states came back with various figures like 74 percent of ACT having internet access, which made it the region with the largest number of connections. WA followed close behind with 73 percent and then NT with 72 percent, although with just 59 percent of connected farms Tasmania came in at the bottom of the table.

Surprisingly though the areas with the largest number of connected farms did not necessarily have the fastest connections, in fact with the exception of Tasmania the statistics were reversed when compared connection speeds against internet take-up in the various regions.

A statement from the ABS said “Most smaller farms located around urban areas are less likely to use the Internet for business operations. A higher proportion of farms in remote areas use the Internet for business operations.”

Source – CommsDay