Australia has the worst rural service I've come across in my travels so I wouldn't hold them up as a good example. There are medium sized rural towns with service only from one or maybe two telcos and even then the capacity is often rather limited (one town for instance only had a single 15 MHz LTE channel from an omnidirectional antenna serving the entire town and surrounding region). In New Zealand we pay more than the Australians do but we have service from all carriers to even small towns. In New Zealand towns the same size as the Australian town I mentioned would have a cell site (or even two or three!) from each of our three networks with multiple LTE channels providing LTE carrier aggregation of up up to 50—100 MHz and directional panel antennas. The difference in QOS especially at times of high demand is night and day. In more recent times smaller towns have all three networks cooperating to provide service from the same tower (as part of a joint venture between all three networks called Rural Connectivity Group) making it economical to service small towns with no difference in QOS between networks.I'd rather have the latter than the former IMHO.