Those of our readers who also abide on the North Shore of Auckland, New Zealand may have read a while ago about the council’s plans to partner with Vector Communications to build an advanced broadband network on the North Shore.
Having not heard anything in a number of months on this plan, I decided to make some inquiries to the local council.
I emailed Gary Holmes, and he forwarded my email to Roger Matthews, the Economic Development Manager.
To cut a medium length story short, the proposal was never to create a network for home users, but to connect as many schools as possible.
This is obviously a bit disappointing, but at least it’s good for the North Shore’s schools, maybe worth becoming a teacher for.
Anyway, the council has put in a proposal with Vector as part of the government’s ‘Broadband Challenge‘ which has a total purse of NZ$28 million.
Apparently, that is not actually that much. Roger cited the cost of putting fiber into homes in Brisbane as being A$450m. This could have been part of Telstra’s abandoned A$4 billion project to put fibre in all over the country. That’s A$4000 million. 168 times what the NZ government is offering.
So anyway. The network would offer a blindingly fast 1gb / second to it’s subscribers, which will be primarily schools but also universities, hospitals and other such organisations.
Q&A
Me: What stage in the process is the plan up to?
Roger: We had to get our updated application in to Wellington by 10 August. We hope to have an answer in a month (??)
Me: Do you have an estimate of when the service may begin to be available?
Roger: If successful – we would like the first schools connected by Christmas… and complete within 10-12 months of getting finance
Me: What are the proposed speeds?
Roger: 1 Gb symmetric
So, that’s the story. Big thanks to the North Shore City council for their cooperation with my queries. Keep up the good work.
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