The cost of the data drought in regional Australia was driven home when I was diagnosed with breast cancer and accessing specialist medical support online proved impossible, writes Amanda Salisbury.

While most people in the cities would know about the terrible drought that has a stranglehold on vast tracts of inland Australia, fewer would be aware of the data drought that is slowly crippling these same regions.

Like others who live beyond the urban reaches of ADSL and fixed NBN, our family has struggled with what is loosely referred to as "bush broadband". It's a term that covers a number of platforms that can confuse onlookers and drive users to the brink of despair.

Basically rural and remote Australia is currently "hooked up" to the world wide web via two main platforms: wireless (for those with any mobile phone service even if just a single bar); and satellite (for those who cannot). We have the latter - Interim Satellite Service (ISS).

Over the past decade, the internet has introduced us to a fantastic array of tools and opportunities. As a beef producers, we have tried to make the most of those available to our small business - including the NLIS (animal identification system) to ensure traceability of our livestock, online registrations of our stud stock, business websites and blogs, supporting Facebook pages, our marketing, dealing with customers and performing many of our essential business tasks via the web.

However, poor management of the ISS (and initial underestimation of customer needs) has resulted in bush broadband customers' once-reasonable data limits and acceptable speeds shrinking dramatically - hindering our ability not only to run our businesses and pay our bills, but also to complete our educations, and maintain our social support networks.

And it has also made it harder to receive health care.

Just over a year ago, my world was turned upside down when I was diagnosed with breast cancer. While I did my best to face down this challenge with energy and focus, the sheer number of kilometres I have had to travel for specialist appointments, surgeries and treatment has been mind boggling. I estimate I have covered about 20,000 kilometres in 12 months (something I accept as a trade-off for living where we do).

A couple of my city-based specialists have offered to Skype with me, to save at least a couple of 1000km round-trips. Unfortunately, our internet service is generally so slow and unreliable that it simply cannot support even a simple Skype chat.

Evading being "shaped" - where your provider curbs your speeds as you reach your data limits - has become an ongoing mission in our house.

In April this year, our NBN provider's service was suddenly reduced from 60GB to 25GB (on peak). This change took place just as we were also rebranding our business, timed for the biggest event in our marketing calendar (Beef 2015). This (unexpected) data reduction sent us, as you might imagine, deep into "shaping" territory with speed limits that prevented all but the most basic email.

As a result, on top of travelling for treatment, I was forced to make additional trips to the nearest mobile phone service to complete our myriad online communications and marketing goals. With laptop and mobile phone to hot-spot, the 100km round trip to our nearest town was made five times in a fortnight to ensure we placed and completed orders, fixed the inevitable issues and paid our bills - chores impossible to undertake on our shaped connection.

Like many others desperate to improve their connections - both by managing their own data better and by lobbying government, the NBN and ISPs to provide better services - I reached out to a terrific resource: the "Better Broadband for Rural, Regional and Remote Australia" Facebook group.

That's quite a data divide.

BIRRR was founded last year by two energetic bush women who had had enough of shocking internet while trying to run businesses and school their young children (via School of the Air - SOTA). The page now encompasses all bush broadband issues and is respected not only by frustrated end users, but also many ISPs along with the NBN and government (who all have representatives as group members). BIRRR has achieved a couple of significant wins in getting some bush connections unmetered (for education sites only).

We have now become experts at data saving, using tips from BIRRR: turning off all automatic software updates (often the culprit when a household goes sailing unexpectedly over their data limit); banning all You Tube and other data-hungry sites and apps; even jumping on our poor visitors for using data that they wouldn't think twice about at home.

Despite this, even our unshaped speeds remain terrible. In town, using a wireless hotspot, I can reach speeds of 5.14Mbps (for downloads) and 9.19Mbps (for uploads). At home, those speeds fall to 0.33Mbps and 0.13 Mbps respectively.

That's quite a data divide.

Because we can't access wireless internet, we use the Interim Satellite Service. ( Amanda Salisbury )

By no means do I think our story is unique - testimonies on the BIRRR group attest to this. Children have had to be sent away to boarding school years earlier than planned, because education has been impossible on hopeless connections. Businesses have been shut down as a direct result of unreliable internet.

I worry that as the drought tightens its grip on central Australia, vital support services and networks which are so crucial to mental health will become difficult to access.

While we applaud the launch yesterday of NBN's spanking new fix-all "Sky Muster", we have been told (by NBN and government reps) that we must simply put up with our current very limited service and wait anything up to 18 months to see the benefits of this new satellite (with some calculations putting the rollout up to six years!).

As the rest of the business, education and social world pulls away from us, riding the virtual wave of opportunity the internet provides, we know that waiting is just not an option.

We need the NBN, the government, the ISPs and Telstra to stop playing the blame game with each other and provide real assistance. The loads need to be taken off our overloaded interim satellite urgently, to allow those living beyond mobile service areas - the vast geographic majority of Australia - to access just a decent portion of what is available in NBN-serviced cities.

We need our mobile and wireless services across this continent to be extended and upgraded - helping not only residents but also travellers who need to stay in contact when they travel across rural highways. It might also encourage a bit of de-urbanising of our overpopulated centres. Surely that scenario would be a win-win for us all?

We need our new Prime Minister - a man who until recently was the "Minister for NBN" and who knows only too well our situation - to help #FixBushInternet.

Not next year, or the year after.

Now.

ABC Landline will be featuring a story on Bush Broadband on Sunday, October 4 at noon.

You can follow BIRRR on Twitter and join as a member, and use the hashtag #FixBushInternet (and yes, we get the irony of depending on the internet to get our internet fixed).

Amanda Salisbury runs a blog and can also be found on Facebook at Outback Paparazzi, Bush Babe of Oz and Better Internet for Rural, Regional and Remote Australia.