Finding collaborative ways to fund improvements and encourage greater sharing of mobile phone infrastructure to provide better and more competitive access to digital services across regional and remote Australia is the focus of this report.

This report provides initial recommendations for consideration by the Federal Communications Minister, focused on practical measures to improve access, affordability and digital ability for First Nations people.

The Mapping the Digital Gap project, established through the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society (ADM+S), in partnership with Telstra in 2021, is the first comprehensive study of remote First Nations communities’ participation in, and access to, the digital economy. This report provides an update on the research conducted to date.

While digital security ultimately depends on the decisions made by private actors (e.g. network operators and their suppliers), this report underlines the role governments can play to enhance the digital security of communication networks.

The authors of this paper present findings from six online group discussions conducted with 5G consumers living in Melbourne and rural or regional Victoria.