Broadband/Infrastructure

Last week about 60 of us got together to think about new business ideas based on fast broadband. Maybe that prompted the Government to finally make its major UFB announcement! (just joking)

Jonathan Brewer has done a great job in putting together data from multiple public sources to list the schools and students in Zone 3 that will miss out getting fibre connections (ultra fast broadband) in the initial roll out. He has published a map showing schools and additional analysis that will get connections under UFB and RBI as well as those that will miss out.

We got our chance today to talk about InternetNZ's views on the Telecommunications Amendment Bill and the Telecom-specific SOP (Supplementary Order Paper) before the Finance and Expenditure Committee.

Being last could have been a good thing. After several sessions spread over two days, clearly there were some questions that came up several times that we could have provided good answers. We had the right team there, people who really know the details. Without any commercial or hidden agendas.

To dismiss all questions about the Government’s decision to go with Telecom and Vodafone for the Rural Broadband Initiative as simply anti-incumbent or chatter from sore losers and theorists is both wrong and disingenuous. At the very least, negative comments about the decision has elicited more information from the Government (for example, see ICT Minister responds to critics of Telecom/Vodafone RBI decision) than carefully worded press releases.

Yesterday, based on legal advice, in our media release in response to the announcement that the Government is in negotiation with a Telecom/Vodafone consortium to deliver its Rural Broadband Initiative (RBI) we said, “Our reading of the Telecommunications Amendment Bill currently before Parliament is that the regulatory holiday that the Government is

Micro-trenching methods developed by French-Australian joint venture Marais Lucas are being tested for the first time in New Zealand this month.

A specialist truck-mounted cutting system - dubbed Cleanfast - has been shipped here from Australia as part of a trial designed to better understand the benefits and disadvantages of new micro-trenching and mini-trenching technologies.

I attended a demonstration of Marais Lucas's Cleanfast system this morning in the Lower Hutt suburb of Kelson, and was greatly impressed by its speed and sophistication.

Sometimes going away from a policy debate helps you see it more clearly. With all the debate and constant flow of news, submissions, discussions and so on, putting the Kiwi debate on separation in context has been a nice thing to do this week. 

Opinion piece in Computerworld, published online Why Newton’s law applies to telecommunications

This morning, Crown Fibre Holdings has announced the fourteen parties it has short-listed for negotiations in rolling out ultra-fast broadband, and three that it has selected for priority negotiations.

I was at a conference at the weekend where Senator Kate Lundy of Australia spoke about the need for the federal government to better work with the regions. She emphasised the need for a region-by-region solution rather than one size fits all.