October 21, 2008 7:33am by David Farrar

Focus on Fibre plans

In early 2008 both Labour and National admitted that, for communications, ‘the market’ just wasn’t going to get us there. In March, National trumped Labour by announcing an ambitious $1.5 billion investment into fibre-to-the-premise broadband to 75 per cent of premises over the next six years. About a month later, Labour announced a smaller investment of $325 million into broadband infrastructure.

Neither plan is perfect. Relative to National, Labour’s plan lacks scale and clarity of outcomes. Conversely, the National plan could significantly change the landscape if designed well, but equally, if done poorly could scare away investment.

Which is why presumably National has said it will get expert advice on the best way to implement a fibre to the home network.

Telecom’s slow rollout using copper technology is perfectly reasonable for them. They’re going as fast as shareholders will allow them to and there’s no reason for them to accelerate it.

Sadly for New Zealand, if we continue to roll out fibre at this rate we won’t get the sort of capabilities our close Asian neighbours like South Korea have until about 2040. Many in New Zealand think a thirty-year lag is a bit much to swallow.

There is no doubt we will end up with fibre to the home for most of NZ. The question is by when. Do we want to be one of the last OECD countries to have widespread fibre, or one of the first? Will there be economic and environmental benefits from early deployment? I think so obviously.

So what happens first under, say, a National-led government?

The first thing is to get people around the table. Those people would probably be Telecom, perhaps a consortium of lines companies and a group from overseas. There will need to be some form of RFP process, development of a long-term regulatory framework, and finally a clear assessment of what the government dollar is investing in and what returns it will get.

If designed well, with the good of the country in mind, the National programme will launch New Zealand to the front of the pack globally and create a competitive, world-class communications sector.

If done poorly we will continue to lag behind our peers and suffer the consequences of living in a nation with communications asthma.

Not much there I disagree with.