Rural schools to receive 1Gbps...

 A New Zealand Regional Fibre Group submission that outlines plans to bring urban broadband speeds to rural New Zealand was submitted to the Ministry of Economic Development today.

 The NZRFG’s submission on the Rural Broadband Initiative (RBI) reveals an intention to take fibre into the heart of rural New Zealand while maximising the open access principles the Government requires under the build.

 And schools will be major beneficiaries, with NZRFG CEO Vaughan Baker confirming the group will provide network speeds of up to 1Gbps to rural schools – considerably faster than the Government’s proposed 100Mbps.

Telecom and Vodafone today announced they had submitted a joint response to the Rural Broadband Initiative (RBI), in which the companies will combine their resources to build new, open access network infrastructure for the provision of broadband in rural areas using a range of technologies. 

ICT Minister Steven Joyce has announced that schools are to have the costs of their 'fibre-drop' paid for by the government.  The Minister's full press release can be viewed by clicking on the link below.

What he has not said in that release is that to be eligible for that payment, the school fibre drop must connect to a UFB or RBI provided fibre cable.  What this means is that schools in those communities that have provided their own fibre access (because they chose not to wait for up to 5 more years for the RBI), will be disadvantaged compared to those that wait.  This has a particular consequence for Ararimu where a Community Broadband initiative is being planned.

Unison Fibre, the Counties Power equivalent in the Hawkes Bay, has announced a commercial arrangement to deliver ultra-fast fibre-optic broadband services to Hawke’s Bay, Rotorua and Taupo.

The key thing about this announcement is that Unison Fibre is "...now connecting businesses, schools and local authorities" across its three network regions in Hawke’s Bay, Taupo and Rotorua.  The work has been in progress for 12 months and precedes the government's UFB program.  That is, the high speed broadband roll-out stands on its own as a commercially viable project and is being done without government funding.

Rural Connect has previously argued that, as in Australia (and now the Hawkes Bay), urban fibre projects are capable of giving a business return on investment without government monies and hence the UFB funds could and should be re-allocated to demand-side issues and to rural broadband provisioning.  Read the full article here...