Connected Students — Removing Affordability Barriers to Home Internet in Shepparton

Connected Students was a two-year field trial run by Telstra with evaluation led by Dr Jenny Kennedy of RMIT University's Australian Digital Inclusion Index (ADII) team. Launched in April 2020 in Shepparton, a regional town in Victoria, the program gave 100 low-income households with at least one teenager (aged 15-18) enrolled at Greater Shepparton Secondary College a free laptop, a Wi-Fi router and an activated SIM card with unlimited mobile broadband for the full two-year duration.
By removing the cost of connectivity and devices entirely, the trial let researchers isolate affordability as a distinct barrier to digital inclusion, separate from skills or motivation. The ADII evaluation surveyed 183 participants across 45 households and fed into a peer-reviewed 2023 analysis, 'How to Make Affordability-Focused Digital Inclusion Interventions More Effective: Lessons from the Connected Students Program,' which found that removing cost barriers alone was not sufficient - local mentoring, timely technical support and digital-skills coaching were needed alongside free connectivity to convert access into confident, sustained use.
The funded kits and broadband ended with the pilot in 2022, and no public evidence indicates the program continued at the same scale afterward, underscoring a common sustainability gap between successful pilots and lasting infrastructure.

Read the full analysis: https://www.digitalinclusionindex.org.au/connected-students-project/