Serving communities scattered across vast distances, Council’s in the Territory often undertake duties and responsibilities not necessarily seen as Local Government’s role elsewhere. For this reason, the Regional Telecommunications Infrastructure Fund (RTIF) has provided funding to LGANT to conduct a pilot program supplying Internet and email facilities to four isolated communities.
The pilot program will assist the Territory Government’s Electronic Outback Project which aims ultimately to supply these facilities to fourteen remote areas.
The four Councils chosen to pilot the Project include Milikapiti, Titjikala, Aputula and Wadeye. Following visits each community was advised on what the Project could offer in terms of hardware, software and support, and what it required in terms of landline quality.
Highlighting the difficulties for implementing this technology, where arguably it could be most valuable in overcoming problems of distance, was the inability of one Council, Aputula to remain in the pilot group.
Because of the inadequate quality of its existing landline Aputula must wait for the rollout of new infrastructure through the Electronic Outback Project.
A training program will assist communities to use the new technology. This follows the pilot program’s revelation that lack of adequate training meant 25 communities with access to these facilities already, cannot not use them effectively. As a result, funding was applied for and this problem will be redressed in 1999.
Another issue identified by the pilot program has been the need to change work practices to accommodate the new technology. In this regard, the enthusiasm and support of the pilot program by the four communities is a major contributor to its success.
LGANT is upgrading its internal network to handle the additional traffic expected.
As well as email and Internet access, disk space will be available to store members’ homepages.
