Morning
Wollongong is a medium-sized city (300,000 residents) located South of Sydney, about 100km. It is home to the University of Wollongong, my host for a workshop on Rural and Remote Broadband. The title of the workshop, "Self, Place, and Broadband Connectivity: Making and Making Do," sets it apart somewhat from other more technical or policy oriented workshops. Here the presenters and participants were mainly interested in what is the experience of living (or not) online and what are the impacts on people and locations when broadband internet arrives in a rural centre or home.
David Marshall, a friend from grad school days and now a professor at UoW, was my host and the chair of the workshop. Other paricipants included Gerard Goggin and Mark McLelland, who I had met at previous AoIR workshops, and Robert Burnett, from Sweden.
I, unfortunately, arrived a bit late and missed a couple of important sessions which set the scene for broadband penetration and adoption in Australia but the conference materials indicated a surprisingly high (to my eyes) level of "3G" coverage in Australia. If the figures are to be believed, 98.8% of the homes in Australia are covered by 3G signals. I wasn't surprised to see that several people at the conference were using their USB 3G modems in favour of the non-functional WiFi network at the University.
The weather has been "iffy" since I got here, with quite a bit of rain and temperatures in the high teens and low twenties. I'm not complaining but it has meant that I haven't really been down to the beach yet. My hotel is nice, though, and this photo is a shot from the window of my room, taken at about 7am on the day after I arrived.
Comments [2]