Indigenous culture and communications: can stakeholders build a better telephone service?

The apparent disconnect between communications and culture in remote Indigenous communities in Australia raises many questions about the nature of the relationship between the preferred and proffered technology of public policy and the needs and aspirations of the user group. It is important to explore these questions, which should allow for the more intelligent design of communications technologies as well as provide insights into what makes for successful technological innovation within the Australian telecommunications industry. This paper seeks to explore the corporate and cultural complexities involved in developing a new communications technology solution, called Country Calling, for such a user environment. The starting point is the persistent very low take-up and maintenance of personal or household telephone services in remote Indigenous communities. A social construction of technology approach is used to review three primary questions: (i) How is the current Standard Telephone Service culturally constructed with respect to remote Indigenous communities? (ii) How are users represented in the technology innovation process? (iii) How is a new technology solution negotiated between supplier constraints and user demands? The paper argues that best-practice public participation processes combined with an understanding of the user environment can provide for the construction of new technologies that will hopefully allow more people in Australia to stay connected