But for the rest of the lower Eyre Peninsula internet access is sporadic and communities have difficulties retaining their point of access server because of the cost. Internet calls are charged as STD calls. The copper cable won't go very much further than 5 kilometres from the base, so if kids and people want to take a computer home from school, even though they might be alright at school, there is a problem because there aren't too many homes in the Eyre Peninsula farming community that are within 5 kilometres. And in the copper cable the transfer rate is pretty slow. The limited bandwidth on the Eyre Peninsula makes videoconferencing difficult or of poor quality.
Many young people leave the area to attend higher education in Adelaide.
Part of the solution to this population drain would be to build a higher education institution in Port Lincoln. However, this is prohibitively expensive. One participant suggested encouraging private universities to set up campuses to fill the void in higher education. Another participant raised the issue that most of the baby boomer population will have a huge farm debt and must save for retirement. More and more of this generation will be dependent on government funding for retirement.