Laura Newell: Mobile price rise no first-world problem

For three blissful days over the school holidays, I went without a single reception bar on my mobile phone.

We were relaxing with extended family at a picture-perfect farm stay in the South West. Even before packing up the car, we’d warned the kids — ranging in age from 6 to 20 — that while there were TVs in the cabins, they didn’t work (I still can’t believe they swallowed that little white lie hook, line and sinker) and that we hadn’t packed any iPads because they wouldn’t work without wi-fi or phone signal.

To our utter disbelief, they were entirely unfazed, far more wrapped up in the daily routine of rising early to feed the lambs, goats and chickens, pat bunnies, herd the horses for a trail ride, make damper on an open fire and row across the farm’s dam than they were in updating their social media with a selfie.

I (naively as it turned out) assumed I’d follow suit and ditch the devices to snuggle up in front of the fire with a real book or sit on the deck with a cup of tea and soak in the view.

But a small emergency back in the “real world” — which would normally have been sorted with a quick log-in to an app and a phone call — soon turned into an issue bigger than Ben Hur because I didn’t get on top of it as quickly as I would normally because of our “remote” location.

And, slightly to my horror, it proved to me that far from a nice-to-have, mobile phones are now finally a bona fide necessity.

So much so that when Telstra on Tuesday announced inflation-busting price hikes for its mobile phone plans — hitting battlers at the lower end of our economy the hardest — I found my inner narrative had changed considerably.

Where once I might have scoffed at those who quibbled as complaining about a “first world problem”, I’m now firmly of the belief people shouldn’t be facing a choice between staying connected and keeping the heating on this winter.