My name is Owen Milford and I am 12 years old and I live in a small town near Donnybrook. I am currently attending Bunbury Senior High School and enjoy learning there, but my internet speeds are becoming a major issue which causes inequality between rural and urban Australians, making my grades not as good at other students of the same calibre, but who live in an urban environment.
 
In 2016 The annual regional wellbeing study quizzed 13,000 people who live outside capital cities and 46% of the respondents said that that their internet was inadequate. I am one of those people whose internet is inadequate, and am writing this letter to bring light to this issue that affects thousands of people every day.
                                  
Due to COVID-19, my father now works from home on some days and to communicate with his colleagues, he videoconferences with them. My fathers job is one which requires lots of communication and thus he spends most of the day videoconferencing. I also stayed home for a period during COVID-19 and I was trying to keep up with my studies during that time, but was unable to due to there being an insufficient amount of bandwidth for both me and my father to both do our work, let alone our siblings.
 
I live fifteen minutes away from Donnybrook, a town which can get unlimited data for only $90 a month with average speeds of 50mbps with the NBN, whereas with the NBN where I live it costs $185 a month for a average speed of 25mbps with only 150G per month.  This is terrible, considering that the costs for internet where I live is more than double the cost compared to Donnybrook, where you can get double the speeds for a half of the cost and unlimited data. This difference in internet speeds causes an inequality between rural Australians and urban Australians, as urban Australians have better internet access, which allows them to study more efficiently due to the higher speeds, whereas rural Australians do not have access to that same level of those internet speeds, robbing them from the ability to study properly.
 
A proposed solution to this would be to upgrade the cell towers in rural areas with subpar internet and establish new ones in areas which do not have an average internet speed of 1mbps, which would level the playing field with urban Australians and allow rural Australians to be able to expand their knowledge through the internet, as urban Australians do. Another solution that could be employed with or without the previous solution would be to speed up the rollout of NBN in all country areas, as this issue is becoming more and more prevalent every day as we delve deeper into the modern era and people become more and more reliant on technology and by association, internet.