PIP COURTNEY, PRESENTER: Many people in rural and regional Australia are suffering from a drought and it's not because of a lack of rain. This drought is about a lack of data - internet speeds so slow it's impossible to do online banking or email a small photograph. There's potentially good news on the horizon with the launch this week of the NBN's new Sky Muster satellite. It won't be operational until the middle of next year, so an improvement in internet speeds could be many months, even years away, much to the frustration of those who need improved services now to conduct everyday business and school their children. Over the past year, internet services in the bush have been going backwards. With the system overloaded, there's not enough data to go around, so thousands of customers are finding their accounts subject to a frustrating computer practice called shaping. Shaping is when your monthly limit's used up and internet access is cut off or drastically slowed.

ALISON MCLEAN, GREENVALE, BOOLIGAL, NSW: I pay 18 times more for data than anyone in the city and I have slower speeds than basically old dial-up speeds.

KRISTY SPARROW, BETTER INTERNET FOR RURAL REGIONAL REMOTE AUST.: The drought has been catastrophic for most of Central Queensland and other parts of Australia and the internet saga has been the straw that broke the camel's back as far as I'm concerned. We're in a data drought.

PIP COURTNEY: Shaping isn't universal, as internet services vary, but it's happening to many of the 40,000 users of NBN Co's interim satellite service as well as Telstra's broadband customers. Those struggling in the digital world without, well, much digital, feel like second-class citizens.

ANDREW PEGLAR, ISOLATED CHILDREN'S PARENTS' ASSOC.: In this day and age, if they can provide high-class internet to the warriors in the Serengeti desert or in Mongolia, why can't we do it in Australia?

PIP COURTNEY: Megan Munchenberg lives at Gregory Downs in the Gulf. Her two children and three others do School of the Air in the cattle station schoolroom. Under the old 100-gig data plan, no-one missed out, but that all changed in March when NBN Co introduced its fair use policy. Designed to ease congestion, all satellite users took a data haircut.

MEGAN MUNCHENBERG, GREGORY DOWNS, QLD: So we first of all got a notification saying that we would be brought down in our data capacity each month from 100 gigabytes and initially it was down to a 50 plan, and then from a 50 plan, it came down to 45.

PIP COURTNEY: Of 45 gig, only 20 gig is available during school hours. It's not enough for five students, so the schoolroom is shaped every month.

MEGAN MUNCHENBERG: Each child, I think, by standard has been recommended that they would all need 20 gigabytes a month each. So currently we have 20 gigabytes for five children.

PIP COURTNEY: Satellite customers who ran out of data used to be able to buy extra to get them through. But under the fair use policy, they can't. So now every month, they lose their internet.

MEGAN MUNCHENBERG: The children can't log into iConnect, which is a form of connecting with a teacher. Each child has an hour each day. They also have, you know, the online programs, which they can't connect to because the connection speed is simply a.) too slow or uses too much data.

SPEAKER: You do have a genuine reason to be chasing education funding for your kids. We do have a future that relies on these kids having a good education and having the opportunity to have that education at home, where they can also learn the real-life skills.

PIP COURTNEY: At the recent Isolated Children's Parents' Association national conference, an unprecedented number of motions were about poor internet services.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: We have lessons starting from 8 o'clock in the morning. Congestion is an issue. Our girls struggle to get onto lessons some days. Anything after lunchtime doesn't happen. Our girls can't actually achieve lessons in the afternoons, congestion is that bad.

AUDIENCE MEMBER II: Somebody - Government, NBN, whoever, has to get their act together and do something for these parents, because otherwise I can see in the next ICPA conference we will be coming to government and saying, "We need more mental health funding for these parents that are just at the end of their tether."

MEGAN MUNCHENBERG: There was a lot of anger when we were talking about the communications motions because it affects everyone every day, every hour of the day basically. That emotion, when you then add in the mix of children, becomes very heightened. So a mother's passion for her children is almost unstoppable.

PAUL FLETCHER, FMR PARL. SEC. FOR COMMUNICATIONS: Many end users have communicated to NBN and the Government that the service is far from perfect and some tell us they have not seen any improvement.

PIP COURTNEY: The then Parliamentary Secretary for Communications, Paul Fletcher, agreed data limits were insufficient for educational needs, but explained why services have declined.

PAUL FLETCHER: So the previous government, when it announced the NBN, one of the first things it did was establish the so-called Interim Satellite Service. They leased transponder capacity on existing satellites - of itself a sensible thing to do - but they sold it as having enough capacity for 250,000 premises. They only leased enough capacity for 48,000. The amount of capacity that's available per end user is a bit under 10 gigabytes a month. There were retail service providers selling plans with download limits of 60 gigabytes a month.

PIP COURTNEY: But as NBN Co's Gavin Williams spoke, some openly scoffed; others shook their heads.

RAELENE HALL, NEDS CREEK, MEEKATHARRA, WA: More than frustration, it was just despair. You know, it was, "He is not telling us anything we want to hear. He's not telling us anything that's going to solve our problem. He's," - I felt that they were thinking, "He's not even admitting there's a problem."

GAVIN WILLIAMS, NBN CO: The service is called interim for a reason. It pulled together some capacity that's available on other commercial satellites in the industry. So it was not a system that was built ground up to support broadband for the bush. So unfortunately, we are dealing with a system that has hit capacity. But, look, we're not gonna rest on our laurels. We're taking on board the feedback that we're getting, much of it critical and we will work to improve to every extent we can until we can get services running on the long-term satellite.

PIP COURTNEY: So it sounds like it's the satellite equivalent of what the people in the bush do with baling twine and barbed wire?

GAVIN WILLIAMS: That's possibly right. But to put it in perspective, that interim system has an aggregate capacity of less than four gigabytes per second, so think about four. The two new satellites will have 134. So it's a massive increase in data capacity across the country.

PIP COURTNEY: The oversold, overloaded service will be replaced by NBN Co's new long-term satellite service, Sky Muster, the first of two new satellites launched this week. NBN Co calls it a game changer, promising it won't disappoint its 200,000 rural and remote customers.

GAVIN WILLIAMS: It's a $1.8 billion investment and it will deliver world-class broadband with higher speeds, bigger allowances and a satellite that's designed from the ground up for the people in regional and remote Australia.

PIP COURTNEY: But there's months of testing before Sky Muster becomes operational mid-next year and it could be a further 18 months before rural customers benefit. They say that's too long to wait.

KRISTY SPARROW, BETTER INTERNET FOR RURAL REGIONAL REMOTE AUST.: They oversubscribed it. Come up with a solution to fix it and fix it now because businesses are closing, you know, families are moving away from the bush in droves because they can't access services that they need to live there.

PIP COURTNEY: Would your message today be, "I'm sorry, guys, you just have to wait. There's not much we can do to really improve the service"?

GAVIN WILLIAMS: Oh, fundamentally, I think there's a level of truth in what you're saying. But we won't rest until we are making sure that we do everything that we can do.

PIP COURTNEY: Last month, the then Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull said the existing satellite system has been a complete failure and first-class internet services for the bush was a top priority. The Federal Government is working with NBN Co to make two ports available in each home, one dedicated to education. Canberra's also found more money.

PAUL FLETCHER: $18.4 million was allocated to increase transponder capacity and that has increased what's available by roughly one-third. This toughening up of the contractual terms between NBN and the retail service providers is another part of that work to correct the position.

ANDREW PEGLAR: I've yet to find a member that's told me their satellite internet has got better in the last three or four months. Now, if they're limiting the download capacities that are limiting all this, why are we still getting worse?

PIP COURTNEY: Kristy Sparrow, an advocate for better bush internet services, says rural users are victims of a data drought and an information drought.

KRISTY SPARROW: What data limits? What costs? How long is it gonna take you to service every family? Is it going to be mid-2016, late-2016? Then they have to actually go physically and put new software and installations on properties. You know, we're talking several years to do that. So these families can't wait that long.

PIP COURTNEY: Do you see why they're so angry that while city people are talking about Netflix and cat videos and gaming, they can't get on to one banking site? Do you get that there's a divide and it's almost like they're second-class citizens?

ANDREW COULL, TELSTRA COUNTRYWIDE: My passion and my commitment is to continue to listen, to learn and to see what we can do to fix things.

PIP COURTNEY: To hose down the anger at the Isolated Children And Parents conference, Andrew Coull brought a gift.

ANDREW COULL: If you could find a way of unmetering the majority of the sites that we use for education, that would be a big leap forward. So we found 38 sites that on ADSL fixed broadband, mobile broadband, we'll unmeter all of those sites.

PIP COURTNEY: The catch is, it's only for Telstra customers, not those on the interim satellite. Unmetering was a huge win for mobile broadband customers and largely due to Kristy Sparrow, who lives on a cattle property in Central Queensland. A year ago, she started the Better Internet for Rural, Regional and Remote Australia Facebook page after talking to a friend about shaping.

KRISTY SPARROW: Sometimes we'd go to bed and we'd wake up and two gigabyte later and we didn't have two gigabyte to spare like that and I couldn't work out what was going on. And she said, "Hey, I'm doing the same thing here and I'm up at Charters Towers. And how about we start up a Facebook group and see if other people have got the same problem?" So we did and it just snowballed.

PIP COURTNEY: The page has become a digital town square for rural people with internet problems. So you don't read the postings on her Facebook page and cringe?

ANDREW COULL: Um ...

PIP COURTNEY: And go, "We're causing - you know, we're part of that problem"?

ANDREW COULL: Well, I'm in a customer business and part of being in a customer business is constantly looking at ways to improve the lives of our customers.

PIP COURTNEY: After meeting Kristy a year ago, Andrew Coull visited Alpha. She brought him here to Islay Plains Station.

ANDREW COULL: It meant much more to me than I ever imagined it would. Obviously, originally coming from the UK, it was a massive education for me just in terms of the sheer size and scale and geography of Australia. I got to witness distance education happening in front of me. I got to witness the ups and downs. And it was Kristy that said to me at the end of that visit, "Andrew, if you could unmeter those websites for us, that would make a dramatic difference for us in this space, so that's what we've done."

KRISTY SPARROW: And I never in my wildest dreams thought that unmetering would be an option and I'm just thrilled that this is going Australia-wide. So if you're on any type of Telstra service other than satellite, you will be able to have unmetered access to the main sites used for distance education, but they're actually used in state schools Australia-wide as well.

PIP COURTNEY: Unmetering education websites will make a big difference at Islay Station, which has five children doing distance education.

ANNA APPLETON, ISLAY PLAINS, ALPHA, QLD: Definitely good news. Yeah, it just frees up that you do have that option for the kids to do all their online web lessons.

PIP COURTNEY: This schoolroom has a Telstra mobile broadband 25-gig plan. Unlike satellite customers, the Appletons can buy more data, but the cost is prohibitive.

ANNA APPLETON: The Distance Ed' offer two one-hour lessons a day through their iConnect web lessons. And this year, just due to having a really big classroom and the limited data, we limit the kids to only doing one of those lessons.

PIP COURTNEY: So you're rationing. Do you think your kids are missing out because of that?

ANNA APPLETON: To a degree, I think they are. Especially just interacting with their classmates and their teacher, having that time with them, yeah, it definitely makes, um - yeah, they are missing out, yeah.

PIP COURTNEY: The webcams Jack and Alex use to see their teacher chew through data. While unmetering will help, they'll still be restricted to a fraction of the data city people have.

ANNA APPLETON: We have 25 gig now. I think, you know, it'd be just nice to have double that. 50 gig would be - you know, that's - so you're not asking for probably unreasonable amounts. You don't want unlimited, just an affordable - yeah, an affordable amount.

PIP COURTNEY: Kristy Sparrow knows what running a schoolroom's like with limited data. She taught twins Madeleine and Tom last year, a year she says was horrific.

KRISTY SPARROW: We were just continually running out of data. And it got to the stage where I had to ring the school and say, "Hey, could you watch what emails you're sending us, how big they are because we don't have the usage that you have." The kids were dropping out of their on-air lessons and because the curriculum was getting more difficult - they were in Year Seven - the school were doing more of it online to help the home tutors and we were eating through more data and more data.

PIP COURTNEY: With the twins boarding this year, Kristy planned to use the schoolroom to resume her craft business, but that's been shelved while she runs the Facebook page, which isn't easy when you're on just 25 gig a month.

KRISTY SPARROW: And we're getting very close to the end of our usage. We're at 97 per cent. So that's not going to do me until the end of the month and we're going to be shaped, which means the speeds'll be so slow that basically we'll be cut off from all internet.

PIP COURTNEY: As word of the Facebook page has spread, Kristy's been stunned by the stories of hardship, stress and cost followers are sharing.

KRISTY SPARROW: Yeah, I have heard of families leaving the bush and that's really heartbreaking because we don't need any more people to leave. I've heard of properties up north that don't have enough data to share, so they can't possibly employ a family that has children that need to be educated because they simply don't have enough data to run their business.

PIP COURTNEY: While much of the talk on the Facebook page is about education, shaping is seriously affecting rural businesses. Kristy and her husband Alex run cattle. The beef business has gone hi-tech with electronic ear tags. Forms tracking each animal's tag must be filed before they can leave the property. Being shaped makes it difficult to comply.

ALEX SPARROW, MALDEN, ALHPA, QLD: It's a heartache, it's just a heartache. Like, trying to organise NIS tags and putting cattle on databases, all that, it's just a pain in the butt. When we lose the internet, we have trouble trying to put waybills and stat' decs and MLA and all that, we just can't get permits. So the meatworks doesn't want to accept our cattle because we can't get paperwork to 'em.

PIP COURTNEY: Kristy admits to data envy. In nearby Alpha, one woman pays just $200 a month for a whopping 1,500 gig while Kristy pays a whopping $600 a month for a mere 25 gig.

KRISTY SPARROW: I just feel really sad that Telstra can't find the compassion to actually understand where we're coming from. I understand the technology costs more, but they really wouldn't have to give us a lot more data to let us get by and they're throwing data at these people that are only 60 kilometres away from me.

PIP COURTNEY: Shaping's hampering all sorts of farm enterprises. Two hours east of Alpha at Guindy near Emerald, Andrew Bate runs a hi-tech robotic business from his grain property, a challenge when internet speeds drop to a crawl. He says his competitors in Silicon Valley would laugh if they knew he went to his mum's in Emerald to get service.

ANDREW BATE, SWARMFARM ROBOTICS: Your competitors sit in other places around the world and have unlimited internet speed and have unlimited download limits. Obviously we can't survive on 0.2. I mean, in our business we need to be able to do serious video conferencing, work with people round the world, also robotic experts around the world and we need to have that connectivity out here in agriculture. So, look, through a lot of pain - I've gone through thousands of - I've got a 44-gallon drum full of different antennas and internet devices we've tried.

PIP COURTNEY: To ensure the business isn't forced off farm, he's looking at spending $15,000 on a microwave link. Andrew Bate works in a world of future possibilities and wonders if NBN Co has future-proofed itself. Broadband use has grown 25 per cent a year since 2010. The National Farmers Federation says if uptake increases by just 10 per cent a year, the two new satellites will be at capacity in four years.

ANDREW BATE: The minute it comes on, I would get five connections here. It would be of great benefit to me. That would be great. But I think - you know, don't think NBN realises how much pent-up demand there is out there. They're saying that agriculture is gonna be the next big boom in Australia and this ag' tech boom is certainly the part that we're involved in and if we're not connected, we haven't got a chance.

PIP COURTNEY: No doubt the new Communications Minister Mitch Fifield will soon know Kristy Sparrow's name. She says she won't give up badgering, phoning, emailing, tweeting and facebooking for better services.

KRISTY SPARROW: We choose to live where we live, but the world is such a digital age that we need to be provided with a quality when it comes to internet access.

PIP COURTNEY: And backing Kristy are rural families from around the country.

ALISON MCLEAN: And we encourage people to keep on complaining and keep on lobbying and don't get apathetic. I hope that we're not shouting into the wind because without hope, what have we got?