Digital Artery
One of five Agora components. Measures fixed-line/fixed-wireless NBN footprint coverage per locality — a modelled proxy, not a measurement of realised connectivity quality or speed. The originally-scoped connectivity-quality sources (ADII, ACCC Measuring Broadband Australia, Census questions, NBN rollout maps) were all found licence-blocked, discontinued, dropped, or stale; this node was fully redefined around NBN footprint alone, the same treatment 24131 (School Density) required after its own original scope proved unbuildable.
Source: NBN Co fixed-line/fixed-wireless footprint data, three-tier categorical (full/partial/no coverage) per locality.
The raw NBN footprint value is a 3-tier categorical, not a continuous rate: full coverage (raw 1.0, 3,194 localities), partial coverage (raw 0.5, 2,239), no coverage (raw 0.0, 1,358). Percentile-ranking a variable this heavily tied produces exactly three output scores — 53.0, 20.0, and 0.0 — because a percentile rank anchors a tied group at the position where it starts, not where it ends. Every fully-covered locality, however good its actual connectivity, receives the same 53.0 score. This is a mechanical consequence of rank-normalising a low-cardinality input, confirmed by direct recomputation — not a data quality problem.
A second candidate signal, based on Meridian’s attainment and income-growth nodes, was deliberately excluded from this node’s build — including it would have created circularity between Agora and Meridian. Localities without NBN footprint data are NIL, not proxy-filled.
Alignment with the pillar. Across the 6,791 localities scored on both, this component and APN Agora™ (Amenity & Access Index) (24140) have a correlation of 0.55, on a scale where 1 means the two scores move together exactly and 0 means they are unrelated. The two are moderately aligned: a locality that scores high on this component tends to score above average on Agora, with many exceptions. This component is one of the pillar’s five inputs, so part of that alignment is built into the pillar itself.
Each bar is the average locality score in that jurisdiction, with every locality counted equally regardless of population; the dashed line marks the national mean of 31.52. The Australian Capital Territory averages highest at 50.4 (102 localities) and the Northern Territory lowest at 19.8 (163). South Australia averages 35.4, New South Wales 32.6, Western Australia 31.5, Victoria 30.7, Queensland 30.0 and Tasmania 27.0. Scores on this component cannot exceed 53.0, so every average sits in the lower half of the scale. Other Territories (4 localities) are not shown.
The other four components of APN Agora™ (Amenity & Access Index) (24140).
- Full redefinition around NBN footprint after all originally-scoped sources proved unusable
- Candidate Meridian-derived signal deliberately excluded — circularity risk with Meridian
