On Saturday last, I opened my eyes, opened my iPad and began downloading the digital version of the Melbourne Age. I subscribe because I’m a Melbournian who is often away from home and because The Age is as close to a real newspaper as you can get in Australia. On Saturdays it has real sections with stuff in it you might actually want to read. More about the newspaper in a minute, but first, to the act of downloading. IT TOOK 5 MINUTES to download. Why? Because I was using a 3G modem in a region far, far away.

The previous week, in a city, downloading the Age probably took me 30 seconds, maybe a bit longer. But not out here. Here, if you exclaim and expostulate about download speeds and second class citizenship, people just smile and shrug. Regional Australia is resigned to being treated as second class citizens. The likes of Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott understood this when they backed the Labor government’s NBN. It has a sense of the visionary about it. The NBN promises – if not equality for regional Australia – then at least the chance of a catch up with its metropolitan mates. Anything less than the NBN is once again consigning regional Australia to the second or third rank. Regional Australia gets forgotten in the debate about telecommunications. Here, we have little choice, and Telstra has an effective monopoly, delivering a poor and expensive service. And bad luck if you live in one of the dreaded “black spots”. No one is truly prepared to address those. Oh, and don’t buy an iPhone. It probably won’t work very well, especially if you live in a metal-roofed house!

Meanwhile, back to The Age. There are two versions available online. The direct newspaper download allows the reader to see the paper as it was printed. The app for the iPad is another matter. It started as a gorgeous glossy clever app. It’s still good to look at, but oh, the subbing, oh the mistakes and oh, the number of articles sourced from blogs and other online mags. Nothing wrong with that as long as we’re also getting the sort of good journalism you expect from a Fairfax paper, but sadly, that’s no longer the case. The Age app looks pretty, but it seems emptier by the day.