Good to see TC CEO Allan Freeth out and tearing at the dogma that comes from the broadband ideologues - his point seems to be forget fibre to the home (FTTH) concentrate on Fibre to the node or Fibre to the business.
I gotta say I agree - I’ve had so many people preach at me about instant 10% productivity gains with widespread fibre rollouts that it makes me shake to hear - where’s the empirical evidence I say?
No - the real issue to me is that my buddy - who runs three or four good sized SMEs, can’t get DSL at his house on 30 minutes from Christchurch - let’s forget pipe dreams about Fibre to the home and concentrate on a dual strategy of allover coverage of reasonable DSL and targeted fibre to particular areas that justify it.
And for those that want fibre and aren’t in a targeted area, the Canadians (did I mention my soft spot for Canadians - have a solution - a great partnership between homeowners and the telcos - nice)
Interesting to read this Wired article which laments the patchy roll out of fibre in the US. The article talks abut the fact that fibre roll out in the US is concentrated to areas that Verizon services and local government supported projects. Interestingly the ld chestnut that has been hotly debated hear appears in the Wired article which says;
Still, it’s not entirely clear that people on fiber connections are going to have a big advantage over slowpokes on regular broadband. Today, there is not much that can be done on a fast connection that can’t be done on a standard one. Fiber is already available to a third of South Korean homes, but that hasn’t revolutionized society there, at least not yet.
Now I agree we need to give everyone some degree of reasonable connectivity. I was at a enterprise development agency board meeting yesterday discussion this issue, and the fact that there are a number of people within the area of the EDA with no access to DSL whatsoever. Clearly this is an issue - and I believe a more important one to solve initially than the FTTH one.
But it’s an argument that goes round and round - and I guess if I was sitting in Wellington or suburban Auckalnd I’d be calling for targetted urban FTTH as well - it’s just that we need to remember where our GP comes from - a significant part does in fact come from rural busnesses, the very busiensses that have the potential to become much more efficient and value adding with the application of technology - and good rual availability of DSL will help with that.
I got an email this afternoon from Velocity Networks up in Hamilton. Velocity is a partnership between local government and tertiary institutes which aims to put in place fibre infrastructure for the Hamilton metro area. In their own words;
the combined fibre networks span the city, providing ultra-high speed broadband internet access to commercial buildings at speeds of up to 1Gbps (1000Mbps). Operating as an ‘open access’ community network, users are free to subscribe to services from a range of application and internet service providers on the network.
The project has a number of implementation phases and is expected to be completed by 2010. The initial rollout of the extensive fibre network has been funded by a $3.3 million grant from the Ministry of Economic Development, as part of the Government’s Digital Strategy.
Velocity say that;
A number of well known service providers such as WorldxChange, Kordia, Orcon, FX Networks and Lightwire have already signed up and are now offering their own data and voice solutions across the network…We also have several local internet cafés offering internet access through our fibre network
It’s pretty well accepted now that no one player can muster a business case to put this sort of infrastructure into place. It’s also argued that fast internet is a barrier to growth in this country (I’d add that it’s only one barrier and we need to think about removing the other ones as well). This sort of arrangement is an example of what we should be aiming for.
And by way of proof that it’s actually happening, here’s a picture of the trenching machines hard at work!
Everyone will by now have seen National’s plans unveiled yesterday for a $1.5b investment in FTTH. John Key’s announcement is below;
Lots of commentary about this already, Rod is pretty positive as it reasonably neatly dovetails with the work the NZI has done (and which Rod was involved in).
Now ubiquitous broadband is a good thing, I’d personally love it. But being a good thing, and being the cure for our economic ills are two very different things. John Key claims FTTH is the productivity unleasher that will move us up the OECD economic rankings - he gives the examples of almost free local toll calls, cheap international calls, movies on-demand and telecommuting. Only one of those things is closely linked to productivity and there is no empirical evidence that a move to a telecommuting enabled world would in fact boost productivity.
I’m not pouring cold water on the idea - I applaud National’s vision and courage - I only hope that the analysis into true return is done such that decision can be made that actually help New Zealand win.
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