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

This paper explores the corporate and cultural complexities involved in developing a new communications technology solution, called Country Calling, for remote Indigenous community users. The starting point is the persistent very low take-up and maintenance of personal or household telephone services in these communities. A social construction of technology approach is used to review three primary questions. 1. How is the current Standard Telephone Service culturally constructed with respect to remote Indigenous communities? 2. How are users represented in the technology innovation process? 3. How is a new technology solution negotiated between supplier constraints and user demands? It is important to explore these questions, which should allow for the more intelligent design of communications technologies and provide insights into what makes for successful technological innovation within the Australian telecommunications industry. The paper argues that best-practice public participation processes, which prioritise 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.