Peter Griffin on FTTH… at diversity.net.nz

Peter Griffin writes about his experience witnessing the Dutch program of Government rolling out Fibre to the Home (FTTH) throughout Amsterdam. Peter says;

The Dutch, you see, are where New Zealand needs to be this time next year - blowing fibre through underground ducts in order to get better broadband to large numbers of homes and businesses.

Of course he’s partially right - New Zealand does need FTTH and the faster more reliable internet speeds it brings. However, as always, there’s a big difference for NZ. Rolling out fibre to a city of 1.5millions inhabitants within a tight geographical area with close to 10 millions inhabitants is very different from what would be required to get FTTH here.

So the challenge for New Zealand isn’t simply that the Government should pay for/facilitate FTTH, this in itself is nowhere near enough. The challenge is in rebuilding our economy into a high value one such that the investment in infrastructure is worthwhile. The facts is we’re struggling to identify businesses that truly need FTTH - everyone pulls out Peter Jackson/Weta Workshops and their ilk but these are very much the exception rather than the norm (and arguably a small number of players could be provided with ultra high speed access in clustered business/technology parks).

The fact is that the vast majority of our GDP comes from primary production with little or no need for FTTH - until we reinvent our national income stream, any discussion that looks at FTTH in isolation is meaningless.

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3 Responses to “Peter Griffin on FTTH…”

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1 The UM
Feb 22nd, 2008 at 11:53 am

Resounding YES to this article. I’d love to see and help the transformation to a digital based economy.Fast internet is only one small issue (technology is the easiest part to solve). Businesses demanding and requiring these services are currently the bottleneck.

The other thing is productivity. Everyone trots out our low productivity figures..but we also trot out the figures that kiwis work amongst the longest hours in the OECD. Its worth understanding that productivity includes all workforce members contribution minus costs…so it includes our beloved, bureaucratic and massively overweight (25% of the country) government…. take them out and things are actually quite good
2 Paul Spence
Feb 22nd, 2008 at 8:54 pm

I agree that FTTH is not the most important issue. I’ve always believed that opening up international bandwidth and solving the peering debacle will do a lot more to help grow the digital economy. After all most of our potential customers do not reside in New Zealand.

http://geniusnet.blogtown.co.nz/2007/12/02/do-we-really-need-ubiquitous-broadband-infrastructure/

On Monday I’ll be posting an article about a NZ business that aggregates demand for creative content and is a perfect examplar for why we need competitive and fast broadband access across the Pacific.
3 The UM
Feb 25th, 2008 at 1:20 pm

So to paraphrase, is it more important to “secure our digital trade routes” ( Rod D’s term) or to build fast internet connections to everyones home?

I think theres a 3rd element, and Paul hints at it. That being lets build some digital businesses…. it would be a nice problem to have so much demand on the international cables because of our digital businesses..

diversity.net.nz