I retired from personal blogging in July 2008.
But you can find me over at http://blog.xero.com.
Thanks to many, many people it was exciting to see the council has put Broadband on the local government agenda.
Broadband role for Capital bus lines
It was good to read Murray Milner’s comments.
Former Telecom chief technology officer Murray Milner said the proposal’s plan to allow telecommunications companies to access a network the council installed was a positive move.
“If it is about facilitating others, that is pretty positive and realistic,” he said.
The council have put out a Broadband report for discussion in March.
The council is really starting to understand that Broadband is competitive advantage to a city and should be treated like other council services, just like roads and water.
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Very impressed! It’s a nice bit of lateral thinking while adding value to the trolley cable system and thereby ensuring its future.
No!
I can’t believe how stupid an idea this is. There are so many better ways to spend the money, entering the market as a backbone provider is a waste of tax payer funds.
First off, this is a technology investment. This isn’t a sewerage or roading investment that has usable lifetimes measured in decades - it’s measured in months.
Second, the tax payers would end up backing a single technology. The city is planning on spending $30m to lay 100km of cable. What happens if technology shifts, and that $30m is obsolete? We’re back to square one.
Even worse, there would be an active disincentive for anyone else to enter the market!
Take a look at Telstra in Australia. They are going to turn off their CDMA network. That is the type of scary decision that needs to be made if you’re a backbone provider. Can the Wellington City council make those decisions? Can any government?
Remember, turning something off before you’ve paid for it means that you have to admit that you made a mistake in purchasing it. With the speed of technology changes, this decision is likely to have to happen inside of 1-2 elections, so by the same person. How likely is the mayor to admit a mistake with $30m?
Additionally, we can see what happens when there is a single provider who owns the wires into the home already - see the gripes about Telecom from their client ISPs. Now substitute Telecom with Wellington City Council, remembering to add in government bureaucracy. Eek!
The City Council should actually be looking into why organisations aren’t falling over themselves to wire up Wellington. I expect it’s the cost to actually dig the ditch and then re-pave the roads afterwards. My quick
research seems to imply that the cost for a cable run is 60-80% in the digging.
The City Council should fix that, instead of entering the market.
My choice would be for the City Council to lay a common cable conduit under all of the streets. This counduit would be rented out to the cable owners. It would no longer cost money to dig up the street to lay a cable. Resource consent wouldn’t be required from the neighbourhoods, since the road would remain undisturbed. There go a tonne of compliance costs. Even better, use one of those newfangled cable pulling robots to do the work for you.
The common good is in the right of way, not in the actual wire. Make it cheap and easy for all comers to get access to that right of way, and then just watch what happens.
Anyone know how to submit something to the council about this?