This guest blog* is from a posting originally on the website of TUANZ past CEO, Ernie Newman. (Original post here)

“The Rural Connectivity Symposium today, run by TUANZ and the Rural Health Alliance, was inspirational. It was incredibly heartening to see these organisations leading the connectivity debate. And it delivered a first for me – the first time I ever recall the best speech of a conference coming from the mandatory Cabinet Minister. Amy Adams is a class act – she spoke from the heart, was informal, informed, and engaging.

It made me think.

And I concluded that we are pussyfooting around with rural connectivity.  Fibre to every farm – and marae, and rural health centre – is the end goal. And New Zealand should forget about interim steps. Lets go for gold now.

First, a few givens. Rural New Zealand is our economic powerhouse. The Internet is not about to go away. Demand for bandwidth will continue to grow exponentially despite phone companies acting like startled rabbits caught on the hop. People living in isolated places need more, not less connectivity than city dwellers. Bandwidth is far more essential in rural areas than urban for education, health, business, lifestyle and entertainment. It is a necessity and not a luxury. The economic and social case is overwhelming.

Fibre is the ultimate solution. It has massive capacity. Yes, cellular wireless is needed also, but primarily for voice traffic and for the premium data traffic where mobility adds value – cellular is an adjunct to fixed lines and not an alternative, just as basic sea freight and premium air freight co-exist. Yes, fixed wireless too has a role for a while, but long term it will never match the capacity of fibre to the premises. Satellite is excellent as a service of last resort, but has fatal flaws in speed and cost.

Fibre, beyond doubt, is the future.

Fibre to the Farm can be ridiculously easy. Northpower, with its considerable success in Whangarei, demonstrated that today. Lines companies are very, very good at the simple business of stringing lines along poles. Conversely phone companies worldwide preserve their business models by making such simple tasks seem absurdly complex.

Last century an earlier generation of Kiwis reticulated electricity all over rural New Zealand. They had few labour-saving devices. They cut down trees, fashioned them into poles and cross bars, dug or concreted them into the ground, and laboriously strung copper wires across them.

So if 20th century Kiwis could achieve that, then surely we 21st century ones can get fibre to farms? The poles already exist. We have technology like chain saws, bucket trucks and mole ploughs. We can minimise compliance costs by legislating for fibre telephone lines to be carried across poles with copper electricity lines without additional consent processes – that’s easy. Added visual pollution, if it exists, is negligible.

So let’s take a lesson from our ancestors. Stringing fibre along existing power poles is literally, a walk in the country.

The Minister should engage the electricity lines companies over this. She should ask them how feasible it would be to string fibre to every one of their rural electricity consumers, what it might cost, and how much they would have to charge telecommunications companies for the lease in order to make the investment viable.

Telecommunications companies have survived historically by intimidating and bamboozling governments into thinking their business is far more complex than is the case. Perhaps its time to slow down the new Ultra Fast Broadband and Rural Broadband programmes, so fibre to the farm over the electricity network can be seriously explored as an alternative.

If it works financially it will future proof our communications needs for many decades ahead, and provide a massive economic and social dividend.”

*Guest Blogs do not necessarily reflect TUANZ official position but are posted to encourage debate and discussion on pertinent issues.

TUANZ is a not-for-profit membership association which comprises over 150 members, predominantly large organisations with a strong dependency on telecommunications technology as well as small enterprises.   We also serve a representative group of SMEs and individual members. These small businesses and residential users are also the customers of our large corporate members, who are just as focused on the quality of their customers’ connectivity as their own.   We believe in the value of presenting professional and credible positions on issues that affect our members in line with our principles of encouraging digital uptake in our members businesses and homes through promoting fair and sustainable competition.

Recently four larger media organisations issued legal letters to a number of telecommunication retail service providers (RSPs) asking them to cease and desist in the use and marketing of the Global Mode DNS services.   They went further and demanded that the RSPs state that the use of these DNS services were illegal and should not have been used.  It is not TUANZ’s place to take sides in what is essentially a commercial and legal dispute between the companies, and we will always act impartially with the outcome for users in mind.

While we sympathise with the media organisations in that they believe they have purchased exclusive rights, we also believe that the legal case against Global Mode is unproven and until it is then no RSP should be required to switch off the service and thereby reduce competition for end-users.   If this means a case will be taken and decided in the courts then so be it, all parties will then have clarity around the current legal position.

We support the continued innovation by all New Zealand companies which provide users choice on how to consume content.  However the internet by its nature encourages the breakdown of traditional business models and geographic boundaries and so it is our view that the laws governing this need to be reviewed to ensure they work well for New Zealanders today and in the future.  These include copyright laws, as well as others such as tax laws to ensure that companies providing services in New Zealand are required to play by the same rules.  We would welcome a comprehensive review and would look to represent our members views at the relevant time.

Earlier this year I wrote about the website Wiki NZ and how its founder and chief Lillian Grace (@GracefulLillian) along with her team was working to make New Zealand’s publicly available data accessible to everyone.  As part of our general aim of talking about how we can use these great new broadband networks we suggested their website was a good place to start – well, now its a GREAT place to start.

Since my last post, they have been beavering away on the backend tech to deliver a great looking new website bringing that data together in one place and displaying it in simple graphs. Have a look here WIKINZ.  But they’re not stopping there – they are working on features and new levels of interactivity and collaboration so that more of us can use and view the data in ways that are useful to us.

So head over there and see what you can find – and also take the time to hear from Lillian introducing the site.

This post is a guest blog from Bill Bennett, Freelance Journalist

Broadband rarely gets discussed in the wider context of national infrastructure.

Yet the government-sponsored Ultrafast Broadband project and the Rural Broadband Initiative are just two of a series of major infrastructure projects transforming New Zealand cities.

To engineers there are two types of infrastructure. Vertical infrastructure means buildings while horizontal infrastructure means roads, railways, cycle tracks, water systems and communications networks.

Infrastructure makes cities liveable

Both kinds of infrastructure make places liveable. They underpin economic development.

In December Aecom New Zealand managing director John Bridgman gave me an insight into another way infrastructure investment is important when I interviewed him for the New Zealand Herald.

Bridgman talked about Auckland, but his comments apply just as much to other New Zealand cities.

Auckland ranks ten

He says the Economist Intelligence Unit ranks Auckland as number ten when it comes to the world’s most liveable cities.

The survey leaves out Wellington and Christchurch because it only applies to the world’s 140 largest cities. Even so, the ideas are relevant across the country.

On one level, the EIU liveable city index is just a set of numbers, an accounting exercise. We shouldn’t take it too seriously or read too much into the numbers.

That doesn’t mean it isn’t useful or important.

Liveable means investment

Cities that rank high in the EIU index attract high quality investment. They are magnets to the brightest and most dynamic immigrants. They are places people want to visit and where they are keen to do business.

Getting on the top ten list is an achievement. Staying there is helpful. Bridgman wants us to move up the list.

Building fast broadband networks throughout New Zealand will move us closer to that goal.

To rank cities the EIU looks at 30 measures in categories such as culture and healthcare. Infrastructure is one category.

Not perfect, not far off

Each category is marked out of 100. A perfect city would be 100. The scores are crunched to get a single number. Auckland’s score is 95.7. Melbourne is in top place on 97.5.

A 92.9 score for infrastructure drags down Auckland’s total. If we can nudge that figure up Auckland would move from the top 10 to the top five.

In turn that would mean more high quality investment, immigrants and business opportunities.

Infrastructure is an interesting category when it comes to determining whether a city is liveable because the people already living in a city can do something about it.

Improving liveability

It’s near impossible to improve a city’s culture in the short-term. No-one can do much about the geographic setting once a city is founded. All the top cities are stable, safe and offer first class education, so there’s little room to move on those areas.

When assessing infrastructure the EIU looks at the quality of their road, public transport and telecommunications networks along with the international links. It also looks at the availability of good quality housing, energy and water.

Anyone familiar with Auckland knows our recent-year report for all those sub-categories is could-do-better.

The good news is that each area is being addressed. The Western Ring Road is not far from completion. Planning is under way for boosting the road network east of the city. There’s been a major water system upgrade.

Work to be done

There’s still work to be done building more good quality houses. Auckland’s electricity grid has been an embarrassment in the past, but things are changing. The next few years should see work begin expanding the rail network through the city. Other public transport projects are underway. They city is getting bike lanes.

And then there’s the broadband upgrade. At first sight it seems almost an afterthought.

Running fibre to every home and business in Auckland might add a few tenths of a point to the liveable city index score.

Where Australia lags

That might not seem much. Yet there are four Australian cities — Melbourne, Sydney, Perth and Adelaide — ahead of Auckland in the EIU list. None of them will have full fibre to the premises networks soon.

Auckland will have its FTTP in place by the end of 2019.

Only 1.8 points separate Auckland from top ranked Melbourne. Auckland is only 0.2 behind Perth and 0.4 behind Sydney.

UFB

Finishing the UFB could push Auckland up two or three spots on the liveable city index. That alone gets us closer to the prize money. It’s an option Australia has rejected.

If those EIU numbers seem a little too dull and abstract to make sense, think of athletics. For an Olympic runner trimming two-tenths of a second can be the difference between a gold and a bronze medal.

As already mentioned, it’s important not to get too wrapped up in the details of one Liveable City Index. At best its criteria are debatable and there are other indexes that rank Auckland better or worse than the EIU.

Yet we can read the EIU index as a list of the work in front of New Zealand as we build a 21st century economy.

When the rest of the world catches up and builds fibre-to-the-premises networks, fast broadband will be a hygiene factor just like every other form of infrastructure. That is, something citizens expect and take for granted, something that will make them unhappy if it isn’t provided.

By then we’ll have something else to build to keep us out in front.

You can find this blog and other comments on Bill’s website at: www.billbennett.co.nz

Last time I stayed in Whanganui, the host at the motel I stayed at was interested as to why I was there – as he said, Whanganui is a destination.  Its not on the main highway north so you have to choose to stop there,  but usually because you’re heading to do something up country.  But Whanganui has been making a name for itself over the last few years through it embracing its digital future, and the build of the ultrafast networks in the city.

The District Council has got right behind the push to make use of these new networks, and they haven’t been sitting still.  They have for the third year in a row been announced as a SMART 21 Community by the Intelligent Community Forum (see here), the only city in New Zealand to apply and make the grade.

The Council also took the lead in developing a free WIFI network in the central city as well and in recent years InspireNet took over running that network – now part of the aptly named InspireFreeWifi service.  The most interesting recent news about this service is that until December last year there was a 100 Mbytes limit per device per month on the free service, but they have recently upped that to 1,000 Mbytes per device per month to cope with users general day to day needs for email and social media as they move about away from home or work.  InspireNet also offers paid plans which start at 5,000 Mbytes per device per month for $10 per month.

The Inspirenetfreewifi network isn’t only in Whanganui though – it covers a number of lower North Island towns with about 500 Wifi nodes in place.  Its just another example of a committed regional ISP looking at how they can work with their local communities.

But Whanganui and InspireNet haven’t finished yet – I’m told there’s more to come so we’ll keep on eye on them.