Onto RBI 2.0…

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Well I’ve had a night to sleep on yesterday’s announcement and I’m still pretty excited, its a clever piece of policy work, by extending the TDL (Telecommunications Development Levy – successor to the much derided TSO) the Government has given itself an extra $150 Million to play with that is fiscally neutral (I think they’ll be hoping that the Telco’s paying the TDL won’t notice that they’re going to keep paying a wee bit longer.

Politically its very smart as it does 3 things, firstly it gazzumps Labour’s $9.6 million contestable fund for very similar rural initiatives, secondly it deals with genuine heartland concern about broadband and mobile coverage and finally it is actually quite ambitious for rural New Zealand.

To be really successful it needs a target and I think it needs to be an ambitious target – funding projects that will have the capability within 10 years to deliver 1 gigabit/second to rural New Zealand.

Thats not a pipe dream. it can be done today with 2 technologies fibre and point to point wireless and by 2024 5G should be gigabit capable as well. 

As a former rural New Zealander (I’m just currently an economic exile in #gigatownporirua) one thing that really pisses me off is hearing that old technology is good enough for country folk. Its up there with the now 30 year old refrain about farming being a sunset industry, I’m glad its such a long sunset as without the ‘white gold’ boom we would be in a far worse position.

Farming is developing into a very sophisticated data intensive business, it is the starting point for the worlds food based supply chain and consumers increasing demand for more detail about their food & where it comes from. But not only that, rural New Zealanders are entitled to all the good stuff that comes with ultra fast internet, tomorrow see’s the launch of Spark’s ‘Lightbox’ service and I’m sure plenty of rural Kiwi’s are up for a bit of ‘Global mode’ too.

The devil as they say is in the detail and it will be the same with yesterdays announcement, there are many questions to be asked and a lot of capacity to be rebuilt. In its first broadband schemes the Government favoured large monolithic structures run by contract, in fact it believed that contracts would work better than regulation.

Councils and small regional operators were sidelined by both the UFB and the RBI and massive waste and overbuild has occurred, the situation in Palmerston North is a prime example where pioneering work was done by James Watts and his team at inspire.net and he had an effective partnership going with the Palmerston North City Council, James was even running fibre to the farm 7 years ago.

Now the Government recognises that local is often best and will need to re-engage players who still have much to offer. This will require both sides to re-establish dormant relationships and a number of plans can be dusted off and updated.

Who will run the new scheme? is it best suited to MBIE or could it function out of CFH with an expanded mandate? Nearly all of the old team at MED who used to run these projects have moved on or retired.

I think it could well take several years to get back in shape for this challenge, the current RBI advisory structure needs to be revisited and updated to provide genuine governance and oversight.

We also need to make sure that it remains consistent with our market structure, that is that new access networks are structurally separated and open access and the the correct regulatory settings are applied.

I’ll leave with the insights I’ve just gained from the engineer behind the very successful Northpower fibre rollout. 

“Our beyond UFB plan is to roll gigabit capable fibre out to all our electricity subscribers within 10 years, the GPON technology we use can reach out 30km and we can push it further if needed.”

— Graham Dawson – Northpower

$150 Million Boost for Rural Broadband & Connectivity

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This afternoon the Government announced additional funding for rural broadband and connectivity, the detail is here:

https://www.national.org.nz/news/news/media-releases/detail/2014/08/26/$150-million-boost-for-rural-broadband-initiative

National’s Communications and Information Technology spokeswoman, Amy Adams, today announced a re-elected National-led Government will establish a new $150 million fund to extend the Rural Broadband Initiative (RBI).

Ms Adams made the announcement in Greymouth with Prime Minister and National Party Leader John Key.

“The RBI is making an immense difference to the way our rural firms do business, the way our kids learn and the way our health services deliver to us as patients,” Ms Adams says.

“Already, nearly 250,000 households and businesses have access to faster broadband under the RBI. However, National wants to see more rural homes and businesses benefit from faster, more reliable internet.

“Therefore, if re-elected, we will legislate a three-year extension of the current Telecommunications Development Levy of $50 million a year to create a new $150 million extension of the Rural Broadband Initiative. The levy is currently set at $50 million a year until June 2016, and will now be extended at $50 million a year until June 2019.

“Of that $150 million, National will make $100 million available through a contestable fund for communities to improve their connectivity through fixed broadband to homes and businesses. We expect communities, councils and service providers will bid into the fund.

“The criteria for the fund will focus on enhancing connectivity across areas outside the Ultra-Fast Broadband footprint.

“This extension will mean a greater number of rural New Zealanders will be able to improve their connectivity.”

In addition to improving broadband in rural areas, National will also create a $50 million fund to extend mobile coverage in the more remote parts of New Zealand, and fill black spots on main highways and in key tourist areas. 

“State Highway 6, which runs along a significant proportion of the West Coast, would be a top candidate for this fund. So would State Highway 73, the main route between Christchurch and the West Coast. Both are major tourist routes and improvements to mobile coverage would be welcome,” says Ms Adams.

“Mobile phone coverage is an essential form of connectivity, and can be even more important in our rural and remote towns, where it has benefits from a public safety perspective.

“Boosting mobile phone coverage also has the ability to help grow productivity in our regions.

“Today’s announcement is part of National’s programme to deliver world-class connectivity to drive innovation, create jobs and grow New Zealand’s economy.”

Ms Adams says the Telecommunications Development Levy was set up primarily to provide higher-quality broadband and internet connectivity for rural New Zealanders. The levy is paid for by large telecommunication providers.

“The levy means more New Zealanders – particularly those in rural and remote areas – can stay connected to the rest of the world. It has funded the creation of the $300 million Rural Broadband Initiative, along with other projects like the relay service for the deaf and hearing impaired.  Its extension will allow further major improvements in rural broadband to the benefit of all New Zealanders. ”

 

 

TUANZ welcomes the focus on rural connectivity, especially the $100 million contestable fund which recognises the fact that many innovative solutions are going to be needed to get serious broadband into all the places in rural NZ that really need it.

my recent travels have shown me that the RBI has yet to make a real impact and even when it is available it’s is decidedly average in its performance, because it is basically delivering last decades broadband at best and often less than our innovative regional wireless ISP’s have been doing for years.

The expansion of rural wireless coverage is welcome by all kiwis who use the state highway system, but it needs to be done in a way that doesn’t penalise any operator, otherwise we maybe heading for a need to review how rural mobile roaming operates.

I’ll blog more on this later, but I’ll leave you with this thought, will this lead us to rural gigabit access within the next decade?

Who’s in charge?

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A few different experiences lately have got me thinking about digital leadership and just whose job should it be?

A recent discussion on twitter also canvased the issue as well, I think the whole ‘gigatown’ campaign highlights the difficulties around trying to stimulate UFB uptake and awareness when Chorus itself comes from the culture that up until recently when suddenly there was Government money involved, actively denied the need for anything better than ‘everyday broadband’ which was seen as being around 256kb/s.

The UFB is a bold initiative that is already driving NZ up the global broadband rankings, the US is still getting excited that fibre might be coming to Cupertino – the home of Apple. Within a decade it will be the norm in every New Zealand town.

In 2008 TUANZ called for the creation of a Government entity dedicated to providing digital leadership similar to role played by the IDA (the Infocomm Development Authority) in Singapore.

Xero founder and all-round digital good guy Rod Drury has been vocal in his call for NZ to have a CTO (Chief Technology Officer) something that is get picked up as an idea by a number of political parties but sadly not yet by the Government.

And when you get down to it digital leadership does seem to come back to the government for many reasons:

1.0  They are the collective voice for NZ inc

2.0  They are the biggest beneficiary of NZ being a keen adopter of ICT through everything from increased productivity generally down to lowering the cost of delivering government services

3.0  They are the biggest aggregated purchaser of ICT services in the country, who else has the money to do INCIS, Novopay etc

4.0  They are now once more a significant investor in ICT and hold stakes in a variety of ICT related entities (for example CFH, Chorus, Kordia, REANNZ & N4L)

5.0  Their policies direct how the NZ digital landscape develops at both an infrastructure and commercial level

6.0  They set and operate the regulatory regime, the spectrum regime, the resource management regime, the educational curriculum and broad economic policy

7.0  They are our interface to wider international agreements and environments for issues like copyright, trade, RS&T and international standards

8.0  Various arms of government also contain more people who are paid to look at the future than you find in the ‘real’ economy where we are focused on surviving today and coming back for more tomorrow

Steven Joyce is a man I like and respect but he is wrong when he says that having a GCIO (Government Chief Information Officer) is as good as having a NZ inc CTO reporting directly to the PM. We do need a GCIO mainly to manage number 3 on the list, the CTO needs to have an overview of everything.

And the CTO needs to be able to look at the big picture stuff like the ‘Internet of Cows’, ‘3D printing’, ‘Digital Inclusion’ or ‘delivering Rural Gigabit’.

What do you think?

 

 

 

The importance of serious play

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Yesterday when I was telling the story of Primowireless and their uniquely Taranaki product development process I was reminded about the importance of a strong play ethic.

History is littered with advances that occurred as a result of just playing around with things, sadly our current ‘safety’ oriented ‘PC’ culture seems to be very afraid of play and its consequences, and our corporate culture is not far behind.

I think it’s no coincidence that the gaming culture is not far beneath the surface at Primo, I saw the same thing when I first met the guys from Paradise.net in the 90’s or when we launched ‘Access 2’ as a gamers ISP in Melbourne.

Wellington got CityLink mainly because Richard Naylor ‘played’ with fibre and strung it between council buildings using the overhead trolley bus wires.

So what else should we be playing with, Rural Broadband ? International Connectivity ? Public WiFi ? or low income digital access ?

The thing about playing is that you ignore the rules and assumptions and you can focus on the ‘what ifs?’ and the ‘why nots?’

We have a very risk averse culture in both the public sector and our larger corporates, personal reputation management blinkers senior executives such that the idea of ‘play’ on the company’s time (or dime) is beyond a sacking offence.

Yet if we want to get a digital No8 wire spirit of innovation going its something we’re going to have to do.

And you know what’ll we’ll have some fun doing it…

GigaNaki

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My trip to Taranaki last week gave me a chance to put faces to the gigabit speed test results I’ve been posting. I took the time to visit Primowireless and see what these guys are up to, what I found is a seven year old business that is thriving by filling the niches that others find hard to fill.

At the moment those niches are rural wireless, business fibre, residential broadband and hybrid solutions that are a digital version of the ‘Taranaki Gate’. Kind of sounds like the ideal future oriented RSP for regional NZ, actually I think they are.

Primo is located a couple of hundred metres up a side street in Inglewood, from the outside there’s two double cab utes and an office located in an ordinary house. Inside is busy chaos, there’s account being done, an antenna being assembled for an install and all sorts of gear lying around.

Talking to founder Matthew Harrison, I hear a typical story, he and is mates were LAN gamers who started building ad-hoc LAN’s for gaming parties at each other’s houses. This is a common starting point for entrepreneurs in this space. He started out improving rural connectivity for people who wanted what the rest of us take for granted.

They now have over 50 sites all round Taranaki and provide an impressive service which has seen customers leave to try RBI services and then come back because the ‘official’ solution doesn’t work as well as what they already got from Primo.

They are also keen to mix and match technologies and are free of the ‘rulebook’ constraints found in our larger operators. I was impressed with plans to bring historic Parihaka into the digital age.

But what I really wanted to learn was what are they doing with UFF’s gigabit residential service and what might a final service look like?

I was wondering how they were doing this when there is no UFB in Inglewood itself. The answer is simple, one of there tech’s Hanan already had 100mb/s UFB to his home, so Primo upgraded this to UFF’s 1000/20 ‘GigaNet’ service.

Then the testing began by testing the ‘SpeedTest’ results from hitting servers all over NZ, the results have showed a few interesting things, obviously local is fastest, the next is that interestingly ‘Spark’ servers produced the best results at other NZ locations, this I think is indicative of the fact that Spark (not Chorus) have provisioned the network that you would expect is required to service 50% of the broadband subscribers in NZ.

Primo themselves have access to multiple backhaul providers and are confident that Taranaki customers really do have access to the best broadband in NZ.

I was interested in Matthews thoughts on provisioning and pricing a residential gigabit service, something I hear from the big guys is really, really difficult. So it was refreshing to hear Matthews thoughts and how his innate knowledge of the industry gives him the ability to create a product model in his head in about 20 minutes.

I need to stress that this is a ball park, blue skies conversation and in no way reflects what Primo may finally decide to launch.

First of all Matthew understands the cost of his inputs, installation, UFB service, handover and backhaul plus provisioning of data.and having good enough user level equipment to actually be able to use a gigabit.connection.

First of all Matt recognises that his handovers will need to be upgraded to 10gb/s, remember this is a shared handover at the point of presence. He will then monitor the need to provision more backhaul as required which I think is sensible. 

What I found really interesting was Hanan’s observation that other than the SpeedTest results you can’t really tell the difference between 100mb/s and 1gb/s, the other issue is that most people then use WiFi that probably tops out at 50mb/s at best. So the case for 1gb/s is mainly ‘overhead’ and that is what you’d get with a house full of device equipped teenagers or you’ve got Hanan and his mates having a LAN party.

I also found Matt’s view on data interesting he’d like to separate plans into the connection and the data, rather than offering ‘unlimited’ plans as at 1gb/s it is possible to go through a staggering amount of data. So options could include daily data plans or buying into quantities in the ‘terabytes’ rather than ‘gigabytes’.

I found it fascinating that each speed test consumes about a gigabyte of data, this is due to how Ookla have designed their speed test, I’ve heard similar tales with people showing off their 4G cell phones and blowing their monthly data cap while trying to get bragging rights at the pub.

The other observation is about customer expectations as to what a ‘gigabit’ really means in that the fastest test to date is actually 975mb/s and you will not ever actually achieve the magical gigabit. So is it better to call this a 500+ or 750+ service, the same observation is true for 30, 50, 100 & 200mb/s service.

I’ll blog separately on Matt’s views on rural broadband.

 

Roadtrips…

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Apologies for the light blogging over the last few days, I’ve been on the road with 2 funerals and an Economic Development roadtrip to Palmerston North.

Its made me reflect on the value of the roadtrip, far from being a burden I think they are really valuable opportunities to get re-grounded in whats really going on around the place.

My first observation is that the lower North Island regional economy is looking pretty good, the farms are green and lush and the towns are all busy. You can see UFB activity going on all over the place and state highway cellular coverage is now pretty reliable.

Its also important to see the real productive NZ economy in action, the Fonterra trucks driving in convoy, the roading developments and the generally good state of the vehicle fleet.

You can now get good coffee pretty much everywhere and there’s less of the feeling of small town despair that you got a decade or so ago.

I’m constantly amazed at the booming ‘cone fairy’ industry where you see 3 or 4 trucks and their crews diligently protecting one council working in his ute picking up rubbish or overseeing one roadside mower.

I saw the spirit of kiwi innovation at Primowireless in Inglewood, and yesterday I sat in on an inspiring discussion at what will hopefully be the genesis of a ‘western seaboard’ economic development agenda stretching from Whanganui to Porirua.

I’ve heard from several sourcesabout the Keynesian economic benefit of starting the Kapiti Expressway and seen the plans that ‘Kapiti Landing’ have to take advantage of that as well as our long awaited and much needed Transmission Gully motorway.

We want to make sure that all these things are ‘digital by default’ and that we really are setting up NZ’s brighter future.

I think I’m going to try and get out more often, you should try it sometime.

Nice…

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Sometimes its the little things that show you how much things have changed.

Yesterday I went to a funeral in New Plymouth, and it was being streamed live over the internet to family that couldn’t be there in person.

In fact there was a subtle digital capability to the entire event, the nicely designed and digitally printed order of service, the big LED TV (at least 60′) showing the now obligatory slideshow of digitised memories and the streaming all showed how engrained digital tech now is in our lives.

Go back 3,000 years and the only people who got that kind of send off were the pharaohs.

Our kids will leave behind a cradle to grave archive of digital memories and their descendants will know more about them than all previous generations combined.

Nice.

 

2 Degrees (of separation)

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What do Microsoft, Steve Jobs and 2Degrees all have in common?

The answer is John Stanton, a founding partner of 2Degrees major shareholder Trilogy International Partners, and former confidant of Steve Jobs was recently appointed to the Microsoft board. 

Thats quite a lot to fit together, so I’ll unpack a few pieces because this is a story that should interest us all here in NZ as John is obviously an insiders ‘insider’ when it comes to all things mobile.

First of all his own CV shows a career that has grown and thrived with the mobile industry.

“Stanton led four of the top wireless operators in the United States over the last 32 years, and operated wireless networks in Europe, Africa, Central and South America, and New Zealand.

During the 1980s, he served as chief operating officer and vice chairman of McCaw Cellular. From 1992 to 2005, he served as chairman and chief executive officer of Western Wireless Corp. Between 1995 and 2003, he served as chairman and chief executive officer of VoiceStream Wireless, which was acquired by Deutsche Telekom and subsequently renamed T-Mobile USA. He also served as director and later chairman of Clearwire Corp. from 2008 to 2013.”

That is probably why Steve Job’s sought out his advice when Apple was developing the iPhone

“When Steve Jobs first dreamed up the iPhone with his team at Apple, he didn’t want it to run on AT&T’s network. He wanted to create his own network.

So says Silicon Valley venture capitalist John Stanton, who spent a good deal of time with the late Apple CEO during the phone’s development period. Jobs wanted to replace carriers completely, Stanton says, instead using the unlicensed spectrum that Wi-Fi operates on for his phone.

“He and I spent a lot of time talking about whether synthetically you could create a carrier using Wi-Fi spectrum,” Stanton said on Monday at the Law Seminar International Event in Seattle. “That was part of his vision.”

Both Wi-Fi and cellular frequencies belong on the ultra high frequency level of the radio frequency spectrum. Wi-Fi takes up five channels of the 2.4 GHz band. Other frequency bands are allotted to various purposes and cellular providers by the FCC.

Jobs gave up his plans to create his own network in 2007, ultimately settling on a deal with AT&T.”

Wired then goes on to wonder

“It’s not outrageous to think Jobs and Stanton spoke candidly about network matters, given Stanton’s long history with wireless carriers. He was the first employee at McCaw Cellular, the national wireless provider that later became AT&T Wireless. He started another firm called Western Wireless, which birthed an operator called Voicestream that was bought out by Deutsche Telekom and became T-Mobile.”

So John is definitely a ‘go to’ guy, Jobs was legendary for seeking out the best advice from the best people and now it looks like Microsoft are after some of the same as they face the challenges of competing in the ‘post PC‘ era. 

Microsoft have been trying to get mobile right for a long time, way before Apple entered the fray, in fact second kind of ‘smart phone’ I used was a ‘Windows Mobile’ these were HTC devices that ran on Telecom’s pre XT evdo CDMA network.

They were awful and made me long for my previous Palm OS based Kyocera ‘smart phones’, but I appreciated have email on the go and other basic internet based services.

Microsoft have had numerous resets in their mobile strategy, with the latest being the purchase of Nokia’s mobile business and the desire to create one overarching OS.

It is starting to look like Apple and Microsoft have swapped places especially when IBM has now firmly lined up to support iOS in the enterprise space.

I’d love to be a fly on the wall at the Microsoft board meetings as they like everyone else try and unlock the future.

But it’d also be fascinating to hear what goes on at a 2Degrees board meeting as they try and figure out their ‘breakout’ strategy to move from the expensive and competitive ‘pre-paid’ plains to the green fields and higher ARPU of post paid business accounts, full service residential offerings and getting a slice of the media and mobile payments pies.

A birth notice…

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Wow!

Residential gigabit is getting born today.

In Taranaki, these tweets from Primo Wireless tell the story with improving speedtest results.

Not bad for a first attempt!  

Not bad for a first attempt!  

Now thats more like it

Now thats more like it

So first of all congratulations to Primo wireless for 2 things, one is giving it a bit of the old ‘Naki’ hard core attitude and seeing what they can do with a gig and secondly for being open about their testing and the results.

I’ve heard they’ve identified some hardware issues, thats to be expected but now they can get on with creating real gigabit products for their customers.

As you can see a premium 1gb/s product will be somewhere in the $200 – $400 range, which isn’t actually surprising and highlights the biggest unanswered question surrounding Chorus’s gigatown competition, even with the wholesale circuit being $27.50 cheaper than UFF the rest of the stack will have similar costs.

This makes me take articles like this with a grain of salt.

Anyway congratulations to Primo and UFF on turning an audacious idea into reality, bring on the giganation…

Update

They’ve keep playing over the weekend and this is the result:

Thats hitting a local server, so UFF's gigabit service is genuine

Thats hitting a local server, so UFF’s gigabit service is genuine

And this is what they get going to other places A+ indeed

And this is what they get going to other places A+ indeed

 

I’ve got to be in New Plymouth tomorrow so I’ll make a detour to Inglewood to meet these guys

Hanging up on Telecom

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Those aren’t my words, they’re Simon Moutter’s as they officially relaunched Telecom’s Auckland HQ as ‘Spark City’.

Like most Kiwi’s over 35 I’ve watched the huge changes that have occurred since the 4th (Lange) Labour Government started the ball rolling by ‘corporatising’ the old Post Office.

I was a 20 something commerce student in Dunedin and it was like living through a revolution, all these moribund institutions were turned inside out overnight. In 1988 I found myself working for Telecom’s sibling NZ Post.

At that point in time, the Telecom ‘C’ suite lived in Post HQ and the tension in the air was palpable, I soon lamented to my boss that we should’ve got Telecom to leave us a copy of the billing system because after they left, Post no longer knew its customers by name.

Telecom then grew up rapidly, started dating rich boys for their money and my mates that worked there started using long words like ‘nomenclature’ but pronounced it ‘Gnomen Klature’ like their new overlords.

As I taught the NZDMA’s certificate course in Wellington over the late 80’s & early 90’s I had many bright young ‘bellheads’ pass through my classes. In truth I was a bit jealous of the glamorous world they inhabited.

When I was making a direct response TVC for the Reserve Bank in 1991 selling Rugby World Cup commemorative coins I used Telecom Mobile’s call centre as my in-bound telemarketers. When we had a scheduling issue with TVNZ I saw the power of Telecom muscles being flexed first hand.

We went on to do advertising and marketing work around the fringes of Telecom, and we had a lot of fun. I have great memories of working with Ross Baker and his mobile team  during the marketing wars with BellSouth, it was mobile that lead to our (& possibly NZs) first use of a URL in a print ad in I think 1993.

My second on-line client was ‘Netway’ and I did my first video conference with them in 1992, I was introduced to the mobile internet then as well using my ‘Mobile Business Solutions’ office in a briefcase with an analogue Motorola cell phone and a device called a cellular modem.

Over the years we drifted apart as friends and acquaintances do, I got involved in the ‘other’ side with people like CityLink, the pacific.net and ultimately TUANZ. At the Project PROBE launch in Nelson Ernie Newman called Telecom ‘nothing more than a privatised IRD’ and he lamented the fact that NZ was unique in having an essentially non productive utility as its most valuable company!

So I was in the trenches and smelly tee-shirts fighting for change over the last decade and look at where we’ve got to. We now have a rational and competitive market structure that is attracting investment and delivering dramatically better services at lower costs to most New Zealanders, we still have some issues to sort out but on balance things are vastly improved.

I have been impressed with how post-separation Telecom has taken logical steps as an RSP, they have the challenge of being both defensive and an innovator. They are focussed on success and they face some big competition from overseas, so I personally wish them well.

As Simon said tonight its time to hang up on Telecom and log in to Spark.