It’s a bit like extracting teeth. Or to be more accurate, a protracted and painful labour. And it’s becoming a bit of a recurring theme. What is you ask? Getting the National Government to slowly and painfully acknowledge that their rhetoric doesn’t match the reality. Or putting it even more simply, reveal their broken promises. On rushing through their plans for an Auckland supercity, taking away the rights of Aucklanders to decide what sort of governance they should have; tax cuts that put extra dollars in the pockets of only those who don’t need them; saying they’ll cap the public service, when what they’re really doing is cutting real people’s jobs. And now claims that they will deliver broadband into people’s homes. Well oops, sorry, it won’t be into their homes, it’ll be to their streets leaving families with the bill to connect broadband actually into their homes at anywhere between hundreds and several thousand dollars, depending on how far the home is off the street and how difficult the access is.
Now I can can hear the howls of protest from the apologists for the government. But hang on a minute guys. Let’s be clear here. Did the National Party, or did it not, promise before (and after) the election to deliver ultrafast broadband fibre to 75% of New Zealanders where they live, work and study within 10 years? They promised to spend $1.5 billion and the expectation was that this would be matched on a dollar for dollar basis by private investment, making the overall investment $3 billion. John Key used this promise as a central campaign pledge. Maurice Williamson trumpeted it from the rooftops. And New Zealanders rightly expected that this is what the newly-elected government would do.
Now my understanding is that after the election, the new Minister for Communications &IT Steven Joyce found he had inherited a pup. A promise that would be damn hard to deliver on. Costing at least $4 to $7 billion and possibly up to $10 billion to fully deliver. And he had to go back to the drawing board. Now I’m not criticising the proposal the government has come up with to date, not in this post. What I am pointing out is that the objective; ultrafast broadband to 75% of NZ homes, is undeliverable at that price. Either that, or the people will pay. Which wasn’t part of the deal. And don’t tell me it was!
Two weeks ago in Parliament, Steven Joyce didn’t want to admit that ordinary people would face a cost. However, last week Steven Joyce was forced to admit it when he said (for the first time to my knowledge) “there will of course be an element of cost…” in the consumer contribution. Well Huh? No mention of that pre-election to my knowledge. And I’m not the only one to comment on this publicly. A report to Treasury has said as much. Though Steven Joyce has tried to undermine it. The Dom Post has been commenting on this issue as has Computer World. It’s no secret that the major telcos think the same way. And I understand that the group of electricity lines companies led by Vector who are vying for the Govt’s $1.5b are asking for expensive extras before they get involved. So, um, there’s a few issues there for the government. Not to mention the pesky question of how to deliver ultrafast broadband to the remaining 25% of New Zealanders. A quarter of our population, mostly in rural provincial New Zealand. Now there’s a challenge.
It’s great to see that you’ve actually done some reading. I’m sorry but nothing you’ve said above is new or anywhere near as earth shattering as you might think. Right back to when Key first announced this policy there was talk across the industry and in industry blogs and media about how this will not include the connection to the home from the kerb – and how high that connection could be.
There has also been talk (although again Labour has been silent) of the likely high monthly costs of subscribing. For example Verizon charge US$144.99 (NZ$239) a month for download speeds of up to 50 Mbps/upload up to 20 Mbps through its FiOS fibre to the home network – ie speeds that arent much better than VDSL2 for around 3 times the price.
http://www22.verizon.com/residential/fiosinternet/Plans/Plans.htm
Also, personally I would prefer Vector focussed on getting its rickety Auckland lines network in order before getting into telecommunications.
But anyway on your challenge around rural connectivity, what is Labour’s approach to connecting the 10 per cent that can’t get DSL broadband? In fairness to the Nats they are doubling the Rural fund to $48m, which is no where near enough but a policy nonetheless, so what is Labour’s policy? Double the fund again?
I’d like to,knwo that too, after all you had nine (9) whole years in power with very favorable economy.
bit what did you achieve?
9 years is a long time.
where did all the money go?
a broadband network for the country?
An upgraded electricity network (backbone) for the economy?
I could listen without thinking hypocrites! if you actually had done something in 9 years apart from going after families and advancing your idea of social engineering.
we needed those two backbones being started whilst you had tons of our dosh.
That you didn’t shows the economic future of the country wasn’t a priority for Labour.
How are we expected to listen to you now?
I get very tired of hearing about people repeating over and over about 9 looong years. The public will put up with this bore for a while, but everyone will get very tired of it soon. It’s also rather rediculous to go on about it as a response to Clare, who wasn’t in parliament then.
But gee these broadband costs look like they could be rather large for users then… getting most people access might be a good start, but then how many are going to be able to afford it anyway?
Hey despair, it’s not new, but it is significant, and I have been saying it for a while, but it’s hard to get the airspace (hence this blog). I know everything ahould be in perspective, but the Telcos talk about just how much people are prepared to pay now for their monthly mobile phone and broadband bills. Are people going to want to pay, or be able to pay higher premiums? And for what? So they can download a movie faster? One of the important things is to drive demand by investment in new and innovative content. Labour believed that schools, hospitals and business were the priority for ultrafast broadband, which is where we largely targeted our spend. Rural connectivity is critical. Our policy stands as it did pre-election: broadband infrastructure such as backhaul and access links that will support high coverage of 1 Mbps service and significant 5 Mbps coverage, and 10 Mbps to 90% of New Zealand by 2012. $75m over 5 years is ring fenced for rural BIF.
We are eagerly waiting to hear what the national Govt has to say about rural connectivity and will comment further soon.
Clare
Oh Mike, please. I’m happy to have a discussion with you but I won’t respond to slogans.
I have a real concern about only covering 75% of New Zealand. The top 25 towns mentioned in the report (http://www.mondaq.com/article.asp?articleid=77740) are meant to represent the 75% but there are some very noticeable exceptions:
Queenstown/Wanaka/Alexandra
The whole of the west coast of the South Island
How are we supposed to build a robust economy without the regions being fully involved?
Nathan, I agree. It not just about making sure everyone gets access, which is very important, it’s also about the improtance of supporting the economic capacity in our rural and more remote areas. Farms are businesses and our primary industryneed support and investment too. Small towns throughout New Zealand have small (and not so small) businesses that require access to broadband. The creativity and innovation of New Zealanders is not confined to urban areas.I can feel some questions in the House coming on
More broken promises from the National Government-is any one still suprised?
Excerpt from the NZ Herald
4:00AM Friday Aug 07, 2009
A strike by hundreds of telephone-line engineers will not sway Telecom’s decision to change its network division Chorus to an owner-operator model, a spokesman says.
“At the end of the day the decision has been made and the contract finalised,” he said .
I am dumbfounded at Telecom’s supreme arrogance to assume that they have the right to make such a decision on the behalf of it’s workers without consultation. Whether or not to become an owner operator is a huge decision and not one to be taken without due diligence. We have looked into their model and have discovered that the numbers just don’t add up. Neither Telecom or Visionstream have done their homework on this, that becomes very obvious when you start asking them questions.
Telecom makes a very good profit from its network. The cost of maintenance is a reality of business, it is not something they can pass on to us workers, it simply is not our responsibility to subsidise their maintenance budget out of our own pockets. We have a right to be paid for the work we do.