Tom Venning (Grey, Liberal Party) | Hansard source

I wish to contribute to the debate on the Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2025. I want to focus on regional telecommunications. Of course, the electorate of Grey represents 92.4 per cent of geographic South Australia, from the Nullarbor to the Eyre Peninsula, the Yorke Peninsula, the mid-north, the far north and, of course, the outback. So telecommunications are of enormous importance for the people of Grey.

Now, we've gone through a few generations of telecommunications. We used to have the copper network, and this was fax and dial-up, and that revolutionised regional communications. Times have changed, and the reliance on that network is no longer required, but of course we still have the universal service obligation on a service which is not being used. On our farm, for example, the tractor hit the copper cable. It's no longer needed, but we weren't using it in the first place.

Then we had the mobile network. It started off with, I assume, 1G and 2G. Then it went to 3G, 4G and 5G. As the Gs went up, the less distance the network could travel but the faster the transfer speeds were.

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