Gigatown – GigaCity New Plymouth

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If you live in a UFB area in Taranaki, your world has just got a lot faster, Primowireless have now launched their new residential UFB services and a new look website.

 

The big news is that they have released the first residential gigabit UFB service in New Zealand (that I know of) and it looks pretty good. Prices start at $109 per month for a 50GB plan (I’d inhale that in seconds) going up to $169 per month for a 1000GB plan, not too bad and I can understand their reticence at running an unlimited gigabit plan. It would be too tempting to try and back up the whole internet or try and download Hollywood.

I’m impressed for several reasons, the first is that in the legendary spirit of Taranaki Hardcore, they’ve just ‘done it’ the second is that aspirational UFB doesn’t look unaffordable and its only taken about two and a half months from when UFF turned on the ‘Giganet’.

This is the kind of innovation New Zealand needs more of and I’m rapt to see it coming out of the provinces. What we now need is more competitive products like this available in more places.

The TCF is looking at a gigabit spec for UFB, but lets see how this goes in the Naki.

If I was lucky enough to be using this, my next trip would be to Dick Smith for one of these and I’d need a plan to upgrade all my WiFi devices to 802.11 ac.

Then it would be time to get serious about have a hyper connected smart house.

Ah dreams are free…

2014 – The cyber election?

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As we get ready to face the polling booth tomorrow, I’ve been reflecting on the campaign and how it impacts on the ICT sector in New Zealand.

I was hoping that we would get some serious discussion going on how ICT is going to shape our countries future. The Government is now 6 years into the biggest program of ICT infrastructure investment in New Zealands history: how’s that going? Are we going to be able to use that as a base for building a prosperous and sustainable future? 

We’re also becoming acutely aware of the impact of the digital world and our place in it, our notions of sovereignty, security and safety are all being challenged. We have been offered alternatives during the campaign but again this is an area that gained little to no media traction. 

Despite all of this I think its fair to say that this has been a cyber election in many ways, we’ve got a dedicated Internet Party, hacking, blogging and cyber surveillance have dominated the headlines and sadly drowned out the policy debates. 

Interestingly its been National that have opened the chequebook for both urban and rural Kiwi’s in New Zealand’s heartland with over $300 million of new spending on extending the UFB from 75 to 80% of NZ towns and money for filling in mobile blackspots and extending rural broadband.

The idea I hope survives from other ICT policies is the need for more vision and leadership driven by a CTO for New Zealand – we do need one. 

And I think a digital bill of rights is inevitable, but we need to understand just what is at stake. 

Vote well tomorrow. 

Some Giganews…

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Firstly the five ‘gigatown’ finalists have been selected and sadly #gigatownporirua came in sixth.

The other related news is that Orcon have announced that they will be the RSP for the winning gigatown.

So its congratulations to Gisbourne, Nelson, Timaru, Wanaka and Dunedin who get to go to Chattanooga and then its on the finals.

For the rest of us there is still ‘gigahope’ in that the TCF now have a working party looking at creating a residential gigabit service spec, so while we won’t be getting the gigatown deal we can all look forward to gigabit services.

 

Rural New Zealand wants gigabit equality

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Federated Farmers and TUANZ believe it is essential the next Government delivers better connectivity to rural New Zealand, and is keen to work with them to make that happen.

 “We are encouraged by the National Party’s further commitment of $150million, if they’re re-elected, and hope to see a similar commitment from our next Government announced this Saturday” says Anders Crofoot, Federated Farmers Telecommunications Spokesperson.

 “Federated Farmers and TUANZ support a Gigabit Agenda for Rural New Zealand that doesn’t leave our productive sector behind.  We need to talk about gigabit speeds, where farmers can eventually get their gigabytes as fast as the townies do.

 “National’s $100million contestable fund is a great start to deliver gigabit speed where it matters. Rural ISP’s such as Uber Group, Amuri.net, Farmside etcetera are the foot soldiers of rural broadband/connectivity.  With no assistance from government to date, it’ll be exciting to see what they can do if they get some backing.

“ “If we don’t address the gigabit gap, the digital divide will be worse in 10 years time than it was when the Rural Broadband Initiative was introduced”

 “If we don’t address the gigabit gap, the digital divide will be worse in 10 years time than it was when the Rural Broadband Initiative was introduced.  Rural broadband needs to be for everyone, not just rural schools and towns, and it doesn’t need to cost an arm and a leg to get it.

“ “I am one of many who have found alternate ways to get my farm on the grid, through radio receivers and solar power, proof that you don’t need a multimillion dollar network to build your own wireless, but it shouldn’t be this hard.”

— Anders Crofoot

 “To date schemes to get rural broadband and cell service have not been ambitious enough. We’d like to make an ambitious suggestion that the fund should be used to pilot rural broadband solutions that have the potential to deliver gigabit speeds to New Zealand’s farms within 10 years.

 “If we are going to make a real impact we need to think outside the box and understand that the technology requirements for rural are not the same as they are for urban.  Similar to the days when phone lines were slow to be delivered to farms, farmers are more than willing to do their part to make this happen.  All we need is for the big boys to play ball!

 “Rural New Zealand is the engine room of our economy, and if we are to double our exports by 2025, $35.2 billion in 2013, we need to empower farmers to operate their business efficiently and effectively.

“ “This is not just a story about farming businesses either; it’s also about the social wellbeing of rural communities. We implore the next government to match their urban and rural aspirations, bringing gigabit equality over the next decade.””

— Anders Crofoot

 

 

Are we approaching ‘Steady State?’

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For as long as I’ve been involved with the internet, it’s been a truism that speeds are always increasing. This has created the current eco-system where we are now locked into a seemingly perpetual upgrade cycle of increasing processor speeds, increased storage capacity and finally increased bandwidth all wrapped up in a shiny device on a 24 month contract.

I know I try and make laptops last 4-5 years and I also try and get 3-4 years out of my phones. This cycle is showing signs of slowing down, it’s getting really hard to tell the difference between a 1.8Ghz quad core processor and a 2.4Ghz one, the cloud is making local storage a moot point in a world of $100 1TB USB hard drives and now you can even get a 512GB SD card .

So that leaves bandwidth as the last great driver of the upgrade cycle, mobile devices are going to take us through 2 more cycles, full 4G, that is devices that include the recently auctioned 700Mhz spectrum bands and then in about 8-10 years time we’ll get 5G and the promise of up to 1Gb/s in our hands.

Most of our other technologies have already passed this point:

  • Fibre Optics – The record is currently 42Tb/s
  • Ethernet – 100Gb/s is commercially available
  • GPON – 10GPON is available (the UFB is based on 1GPON
  • WiFi – 3.2Gb/s WiFi routers are already available in NZ
  • Point to point wireless – 1Gb/s equipment is available today

So the final bottleneck is mobile broadband and 5G should get there around 2022 – 2024

But then what happens? It’s going to be hard to maintain the full blown ‘hype cycle’ on details like battery life and screen density when everything else will be as fast as we’re going to need for quite a long time.

And thats the point where I wonder if we’ll hit the steady state of bandwidth, this magical point will hopefully usher in an age of efficiency in applications and services. Current business models are driven by the assumption that bandwidth is scarce and expensive, but when it becomes ubiquitous we’ll need new business models.

The steady state has occurred in other industries like electricity (240 volts AC @ 60Hz) and gets enforced in others like fuel octane ratings and highway speed limits. Once the steady state occurs the full economic benefit of the emerging technology can truly manifest themselves.

Reliable, reticulated electricity has for the last 100 years allowed our civilisation to deliver more comfort, health and wealth to more people than any preceding time in human history, what impact will reliable ubiquitous bandwidth have on the next 100 years?

 

Stick to your knitting

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In business sticking to your knitting is usually regarded as a virtue, that is unless your name is Apple in which case you’re just about obliged to go and wreck beautifully designed carnage in other peoples piles of yarn.

I was reminded of this adage this week as I watched the Apple keynote for the second time (sad I know) before returning to playing with Spark’s new ‘Lightbox‘ service. While I was digesting the Apple announcements and browsing the Lightbox catalogue I got to thinking about the challenge Spark are facing .

Spark are trying to get a slice of the on-demand video pie, money thats currently either going locally to Sky or Quikflix or internationally to Netflix or Hulu. We know the network is capable of supporting video streaming at its current levels and for most of us it will only get better with the UFB.

Lightbox is ok but not $15 a month kind of special, running it on my iPad through my Apple TV works fine but it locks up two devices, its very easy to accidentally stop your video and you can’t save your place to start again, I can get more content for the same price on Quikflix and if I was prepared to go down the ‘Global Mode‘ or ‘unblock.us‘ path I can get the real thing, plus if I do that my Apple TV becomes a whole lot more useful.

Then I saw an ad for Spark’s new mobile payment service, again it looks solid, it is competing with the banks and OTT services like ‘square’ and ‘paypal‘. But now that Tim Cook has announced Apple Pay the game has changed, because I already have an iTunes account, I am already able to use Apple Pay whenever it launches in New Zealand.

And there is the dilemma for Spark, whilst they are dominant locally they don’t have the reach or the financial clout to go and play with other peoples yarn so they may need to focus on making their network the best it can be, launching innovative services and making sure that OTT works best on the Spark network for Spark customers.

Maybe instead of putting the money into Lightbox they’d have been better of creating their own version of Global Mode, it would have stopped customers changing their DNS settings and we know what that led to.

Oh and they also need to keep an eye on that Mr Cook and his fruit company, because a minor point in the presentation on IPhone 6 is a new technology to allow cellular calls on wifi networks.

Friday Focus

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Some quick observations on the weeks tech news here and abroad.

Chorus still singing out of tune.

This weeks appeal court ruling, yet again signals the need for a strategic reset at our largest telco infrastructure provider.

Not going to hold my breath waiting though.

Spark splutters.

The Spark internet outage showed how dependent we’ve all become on fast, always on internet access. The various causes were fun to speculate on and will keep the conspiracy minded awake for ages, the choices range from old, out of date edge routers (DSL modems), through voyeuristically promoted malware to Russian cyberwarfare.

Whatever the cause Spark need to look at how responsive they are to major network failures and the speed of their response. As one insider said ‘thank god it happened on the weekend’.

All the more reason to be careful out there.

Apple do it again

Tim Cook showed that he really is the ‘Apple Master’ when he unveiled the first really new products and services of his era at Apple. The new iPhones play catch up with the larger Androids and now there is an Apple ‘phablet‘, The Apple Watch looks like it may do for wearables what the iPod did for music and the iPhone and iPad did for mobile, but the sleeper is probably the new Apple Pay service, which promises to make over the world of payments.

Its interesting that the branding schema is now ‘Apple’ and no longer ‘i’., probably just as well because for me the Apple Watch becomes the iWant and thats definitely followed by the iPay.

They say that you are more likely to get divorced than change banks, well I think leaving the Apple ecosystem is going to be even less likely than that real soon.

Broadband Affordability

A new report by Jon Brewer, asks if New Zealand is meeting its ITU broadband affordability obligations (basically less than 2% of average household incomes), after some serious ninja grade data mash ups and analysis Jon comes to the conclusion that on the whole we do meet the standard.

Except for rural satellite subscribers, some of whom are spending up to 9% of the household income on broadband.

We need more work like this done, I’d like to understand more about the often quoted 20% of households who can’t afford internet access.

Who to vote for

And finally with the election just around the corner, if you’re thinking of basing your vote on the respective parties ICT polices, the good folk at NZ Rise have gone to trouble of questioning all the parties and putting their responses here.

 

 

Outage Outrage…

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Now that the bits are getting themselves flowing in the right direction at Spark, its probably a good time to make some observations.

The first one is that this is the second major Spark/Telecom ‘outage’ media storm that I have covered from the TUANZ perspective (the first was the XT meltdown) and there have been a number of similarities and some major differences. 

I think Spark have an issue in knowing when an issue has arisen, and I think this is down to a couple of things, the first is the sheer size of the beast and the second is the distance between outsourced, call centre based customer service and senior management. 

I know its unfair but i have an image in my mind of a lumbering ‘brontosaurus’ with its tail on fire and it taking a while for the distant head to identify the smell, then look back to see the flames and then finally alter course to find some water to put it out. 

Once they knew they had a problem Spark were faced with three challenges, solving the problem, dealing with customers and dealing with the media. 

The first problem has been aptly described as ‘whack a mole’  at the same time as they trying to find a needle in a haystack. I have the utmost respect for the systems administrators and cyber-security team who did the actual digital fire firefighting, I hope they’re enjoying some well deserved rest and are in line for preformance bonuses.

The next issue is now really hard, customers now rely on the internet being always on and complain loudly when it isn’t. If this had happened ten years ago it wouldn’t have been as big a deal, but now it ranks just below a power cut in terms of disruption and inconvenience.

What’s even more difficult is that it becomes hard to keep your customers up to date when the phones are running red hot and they can’t get on-line to find out why they’re not on-line. Everyone assumes that the problem is isolated in the first instance and just relates to them.

The only disinfectant for confusion and hearsay is the truth or at least as much truth as you know and to Sparks credit they had their comms team on the case on Saturday, I know this because I got caught up in phase three when the media were looking for explanations as to what was going on. 

It was at about this time that the ‘fog of war’ descended and people were coming up with explanations about ‘malware’, ‘cyber crime’ and why just Spark?. The media were looking for newsworthy angles and good stories and by Monday it had turned juicy, the malware was introduced by customers downloading a ‘viewer’ allowing to see the infamous ‘hacked’ Jennifer Lawrence intimate ‘selfies’.  

The story had it all now but still didn’t feel right, so it was with relief that I read this piece on Stuff this morning. 

Mundane as it seems that does make a lot more sense, there is still a ‘cyber warfare‘ angle but it seems Spark were mere pawns in a much bigger game. 

So what lessons have we learnt? 

 Spark need to run a 24/7 NOC that is pretty pro-active in getting alerts out to customers

Spark need a non-internet based method of alerting customers to outages

Spark need to get the media on side fast

Spark have done well sharing details once they are known

Spark need to pay more attention to customers ‘edge’ devices and possibly manage them remotely

I hope this helps. 

Election 2014 – ICT Policies

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I’m not sure too many people are going to vote this year solely based on ICT policies, but if you are involved in the sector its worth being across what’s on offer and it might affect you or your business.

It’s been such a weird campaign so far as policy debate is a distant second from the ‘dirty politics’ saga and the general decline of political commentary into the realm of reality TV and sports reporting. 

So I’ve been really impressed with the work being done by NZ Rise to compare, contrast and question the various parties about their ICT policies. 

NZ Rise if you don’t know them yet, are the collective body of “NZ Owned Digital Technology Companies’ and they represent NZ’s genuine indigenous ICT industry.

Here’s what Don Christie, the chair of NZ Rise had to say about the project so far: 

I think it is fair to say that we have had comprehensive and serious
responses from across the political spectrum and from all the major
parties. This does show how the awareness of the importance of the NZ
digital sector has grown over the last three years.

Many of the policies espoused are ones that NZ digital companies will
welcome. They form the core of the platform that NZRise as been advocating
for over the years; growing the digital technology sector, promoting open standards, supporting local industry through government procurement, and bringing new digital talent into the workforce. We are pleased to see discussion on the role of Government wide technology strategy and upskilling of government branches.

We welcome the emphasis from the Māori Party on engaging Māori with ICT,
particularly in education.

Similarly the procurement policies of the Labour and the Greens
recognise the potential for Government spending to be a real driver of
digital success and future exports for Kiwi owned businesses. The
National Parties support for open standards and open source software is
reflected by others but also recognises the need for government systems
to be able to interoperate freely and avoid capture by old technology
and individual vendors.

Most importantly we see real focus on the need to educate the next
generation of digital technologist, to be active creators and great
products and services rather than mere consumers.

NZRise recognises there is much work to ensure that the promise of these
policies is realised in practice, to the advantage of the NZ economy,
society and business community. But what we have seen in these responses
gives us real confidence that progress is being made.

NZRise will continue to work with the incoming Government to provide updates on developments in digital technology and the needs of our members.

There’s not a lot there that I can disagree with from a TUANZ perspective, it is good to see most of our political parties accept the key role digital infrastructure and technology will play in NZ’s future. 

If there is one policy that I’d like to see implemented it is the idea of having a CTO (Chief Technology Officer) for NZ that reports directly to the Prime Minister and cabinet. This was rebuffed by Steven Joyce as being unnecessary because we already have the GCIO (Government Chief Information Officer) working in the DIA.

Sadly this misses the point, the GCIO has an internal focus on government ICT projects, the focus of the CTO would be external and look at NZ’s overall digital development. 

The NZ Rise project is dynamic and it is being updated, do you think they’ve missed anything? 

 

Election 2014 – ICT Policies

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I’m not sure too many people are going to vote this year solely based on ICT policies, but if you are involved in the sector its worth being across what’s on offer and it might affect you or your business.

It’s been such a weird campaign so far as policy debate is a distant second from the ‘dirty politics’ saga and the general decline of political commentary into the realm of reality TV and sports reporting. 

So I’ve been really impressed with the work being done by NZ Rise to compare, contrast and question the various parties about their ICT policies. 

NZ Rise if you don’t know them yet, are the collective body of “NZ Owned Digital Technology Companies’ and they represent NZ’s genuine indigenous ICT industry.

Here’s what Don Christie, the chair of NZ Rise had to say about the project so far: 

I think it is fair to say that we have had comprehensive and serious
responses from across the political spectrum and from all the major
parties. This does show how the awareness of the importance of the NZ
digital sector has grown over the last three years.

Many of the policies espoused are ones that NZ digital companies will
welcome. They form the core of the platform that NZRise as been advocating
for over the years; growing the digital technology sector, promoting open standards, supporting local industry through government procurement, and bringing new digital talent into the workforce. We are pleased to see discussion on the role of Government wide technology strategy and upskilling of government branches.

We welcome the emphasis from the Māori Party on engaging Māori with ICT,
particularly in education.

Similarly the procurement policies of the Labour and the Greens
recognise the potential for Government spending to be a real driver of
digital success and future exports for Kiwi owned businesses. The
National Parties support for open standards and open source software is
reflected by others but also recognises the need for government systems
to be able to interoperate freely and avoid capture by old technology
and individual vendors.

Most importantly we see real focus on the need to educate the next
generation of digital technologist, to be active creators and great
products and services rather than mere consumers.

NZRise recognises there is much work to ensure that the promise of these
policies is realised in practice, to the advantage of the NZ economy,
society and business community. But what we have seen in these responses
gives us real confidence that progress is being made.

NZRise will continue to work with the incoming Government to provide updates on developments in digital technology and the needs of our members.

There’s not a lot there that I can disagree with from a TUANZ perspective, it is good to see most of our political parties accept the key role digital infrastructure and technology will play in NZ’s future. 

If there is one policy that I’d like to see implemented it is the idea of having a CTO (Chief Technology Officer) for NZ that reports directly to the Prime Minister and cabinet. This was rebuffed by Steven Joyce as being unnecessary because we already have the GCIO (Government Chief Information Officer) working in the DIA.

Sadly this misses the point, the GCIO has an internal focus on government ICT projects, the focus of the CTO would be external and look at NZ’s overall digital development. 

The NZ Rise project is dynamic and it is being updated, do you think they’ve missed anything?