Almost half of regional Australians rate their internet coverage as "very poor", a University of Canberra survey has revealed.

The annual regional wellbeing study quizzed 13,000 people who live outside capital cities, and highlighted their concern that poor internet is hurting regional economies.

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According to associate professor Jacki Schirmer 48 per cent of respondents said their internet was inadequate, or did not meet their current needs.

Nationally, just 37 per cent of regional Australians rated their internet as "okay" or "good".

"A lot of those are on the 'okay' end; they're not saying it's good, they're saying it's just enough for their needs," Dr Schirmer said.

"We can see the significance of it because we also asked people how their community's going overall.

"If people report having good access to internet, they're typically also reporting much better economic conditions in their community.

"Some of that is because it tends to be the larger towns and cities that have better internet and better economy.

"But we also see it in the rural areas where you've got less population.

"If they've got good access to the internet, they also tend to be more positive about their future and more positive about how well their community's going to do in future."

Regional NSW, QLD report worst internet coverage

Rural people in NSW were the most dissatisfied with their internet, followed by Queensland, although the survey data was collected late last year, before sites were connected to the NBN's new Sky Muster satellite.

There was more satisfaction with regional internet in Tasmania, which was the first state to have some rural areas connected to the National Broadband Network.

Dr Schirmer said poor internet coverage was also affecting the ability of technology to close the gap between rural and urban Australians in health care.

"We hear a lot of the health sector saying they want to deliver specialist medical services to rural communities using telehealth or e-health services," she said.

"That doesn't work unless you've got the internet in the first place, so we've got these great initiatives that can't get into communities."

Farmers report worst internet of all

The Canberra University survey reported that Australia's remote dryland farmers had the worst internet connectivity of all regional Australians.

At the same time, research and extension organisations were using the internet and video to disseminate the latest information, making it harder for farmers with slow, unreliable or limited internet to access.

Dr Schirmer said farmers were being told to adopt new internet-based technology to improve their production and efficiency, but their internet was not good enough to allow them to do that.

"I've had farmers ringing me up saying 'I've bought this piece of equipment for $500,000 and to get the best out of it I need decent internet and I don't have that, so I've wasted a bunch of money'," Dr Schirmer said.