Free online education for struggling rural kids during COVID-19

NEWS FLASH:
We are excited to announce that this offer is now being extended until 15 January 2021.
If you meet the criteria below and would like to apply for access to a free connection, please call us on 1300 759 637.

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Free online education is now available until September 2020 for the kids of rural Australian families struggling through COVID-19, who’ve never had an nbn™ connection before.

SkyMesh is working with nbn co to bring free connections to families who meet the eligibility criteria. This is fundamentally about ensuring children are not educationally disadvantaged during these unprecedented times.

Rural families who are experiencing financial hardship during the pandemic – and have a school-aged child studying from home – can apply to SkyMesh for a temporarily free connection.

This connection can be cancelled at any time without penalty, however, in October 2020, these free plans will convert to a standard paid plan for $69.95 per month (view standard plan details here).

For a limited time, these same families can also purchase an nbn-ready router on a payment schedule of $20 per month over 6-months.

We’re making plans available for both Fixed Wireless and Sky Muster™ Plus connections as outlined in the table below.

Sky Muster™ Plus plans come with most online activities unmetered by default. This means that these users only really need data for metered activities such as video streaming and VPN traffic.

Fixed Wireless plans do not have unmetered data.

These differences in plan structure account for the differences in data being offered in our free plans below. The unmetered data element pushes up the value of the Sky Muster™ Plus plan to equate with the Fixed Wireless plan.

Keep in mind, these free plans are designed to support online learning for financially disadvantaged rural children.

Plan details

Financial hardship eligibility criteria for accessing these plans is as follows:

• Low Income Health Care Card
• Farm Household Allowance
• Parenting Payment
• Youth Allowance
• JobSeeker Payment
• JobKeeper Payment
• Austudy
• ABSTUDY
• or other similar evidence of financial hardship.

If you meet the criteria and would like to apply for access to a free connection, please call us on 1300 759 637.

Written by Barney Lassen

Originally from Oxford (UK), Barney's headed up the Marketing team since 2016. Outside of work, you might catch him down his local swimming pool or walking his very-good-girl, Macey.