New Zealand is at a turning point in its history. We are poised to create a new network. A network that will deliver critical infrastructure for our nation.
What that network can deliver is transformation, social and economic. On many levels.
I don’t think the bigger picture has been properly articulated and therefore isn’t there to be strived for. I gave a speech in Auckland today which attempted to spell out a Labour view on how important access to technology is for our social and economic future.
Ultrafast broadband is not an end in itself. It does not constitute by itself the big picture for New Zealand. It is however, a critical component. Because it’s the means to connectivity. But there’s much more to it.
Imagine how our country could be in a decade. Even less than a decade.
Where pretty much all people are connected. With a fast connection, whether you live in the city or the country. Where poorer communities, both rural and urban have more options to develop and to keep families together.
Where data caps are much less relevant and people can afford to be connected.
Where children bring home laptops from school and teach their parents how to use them. Where at risk adolescents who may have in the past ended up leaving school and hanging out on the streets gather together in groups and make music, games and movies. And end up in jobs.
Where schools teach creative content, ICT is an integral part of teaching and learning across the curriculum, where there are clear pathways from school in further training and a myriad of careers. Well paid jobs that are transforming the New Zealand economy.
Where the ICT industry is seen, and placed at the forefront of NZ’s economic growth. And is delivering.
Equitable access to technology isn’t going to solve all our social problems. It’s not going to stop domestic violence, alcohol and drug abuse. It wont stop kids ending up at school without breakfast and shoes. It wont stop gangs and the drug trade. And it wont stop people get diabetes, obesity and cancer.
But it could help make us more equal and if it boosts the economy, there’s more jobs and less poverty.
Read the rest of my speech here:
Wouldn’t it be great to have broadband. I could access lots more information.
Its very hard to study distance when the internet takes ages to load up the uni’s page where the weekly classes are, and all information on assignments etc. If I had broadband, it would save a lot of time and fustration.
NZ developers could ship gigs of newly written software off overseas for client review, or receive gigs of overseas written software here in an hour, for local testing by our software teams. Lots of hard foreign currency earned by NZ’ers either way.
Bring it on Clare!
Competition pushes the costs up not down, ergo, what we need is a lot of publicly owned seabed cables going into major international hubs. That’s one cable going to each hub. Competition means two or more cables going to each hub so the infrastructure is at least twice as expensive. Then there’s the added cost of interconnect agreements and probably regulation for those as well.
Competition pushes profits down but the total cost still needs to be met by the economy.
It isn’t connection speeds that are holding NZ back. It’s things like insane data caps, charging for traffic both ways, and charging more for international traffic.
Hello Clare,
Thoroughly enjoyed your presentation at the 1st Commsday Auckland Summit yesterday.
Yet the minister could only come via a slow ISDN connection, even though fibre runs past the ministers office.
Is this why the urban UFB seems to be more important than the lowly funded non-urban RBI which will deliver a 2nd class Fibre-to-the-Farm (FttF) solution?
Your views on this matter would be appreciated.
Loota, one does not need to ship “gigs” of software for client review each time, merely that which has changed. Source management systems like CVS, subversion, git etc are not particularly bandwidth hungry when code is moved around. And setting one up here or there (or even a bunch in both) is not a big deal. Also, development, testing and code review time vs transport time will always be on completely different scales owing to the nature of the activities. Do you think developers here are struggling to get their code to customers overseas because of bandwidth problems? (And if so, how much is local bandwidth as opposed to international capacity?)
I could code all day here and not even need a small percentage of the bandwidth I already have (and most of what I do is for domestic customers, but hosted overseas).
Sorry but Internet goods do not export like physical goods. We’re getting all excited by ultrafast universal broadband without a clear plan of what this spend will deliver to us, other than more illegal downloads and faster porn. It’s just a waste of money which we don’t have.
Exporting media like film, now that’s a whole different issue. But how much does the average taxpayer want to subsidise our fledgling movie industry?
I share your utopic vision, Clare, ultra fast broadband is very important. Have some concerns over wireless – it can cause inferitility. If health issues can be got around then what an awesome amount of awesomeness that will be created.
raiman said:
damn quotes, soz :rolleyes:
@rainman: Have a read of Rod Drury’s “Securing Our Digital Trade Routes“. Most of our data is transferred to and from overseas, so it does matter.
@DeepRed – good point