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Posted by rod@drury.net.nz in Communications at 12:15 pm on Wednesday, 5 September 2007
The NZ Institute have just announced a project they have been working on for a while (and I’ve been involved with) around a broadband strategy for New Zealand.
This is an important bit of work as it develops the business case for broadband. This has been a gap in the debate and I’m very grateful that David and his team have taken this on.
Background to the project is downloadable here as a pdf.
A broadband strategy for New Zealand.
blog
Good on ya Rod for getting ivolved in something that is for the greater good…
yup, a great start…
there’s some strong synergies with work that’s been done elsewhere recently. specifically, the COMET report (how can NZ SME’s tap export markets with e-commerce capabilities), the OECD report on NZ innovation, and the Digital Strategy, which is referred to. Also ties in with recent announcement to support growth of NZ companies offshore (can’t quite understand why that received such a backlash in the media…)
I really like the idea of a weightless economy too - really ties in the aforementioned synergies with environmental sustainability imperatives.
keen to see the next report! &, more importantly, some action.
Happy to see people thinking about this seriously and in a practical fashion instead of unfocused hand-waving that doesn’t get us anywhere.
Good show.
Yes if NZinc is to achieve weightlessness we will need a ‘heavier’ infrastructure to launch off, which can provide better broadband (and mobile 4G possibly?). Is the aim to get to a position where a system like “youtube” could actually be hosted in NZ and not offshore?
So many questions… I look forward to the discussion paper in 2008
nice work
Throughout 2007 I had the uneasy feeling that we had got a wee bit ahead of ourselves in terms clamouring for more bandwidth but without first making a proper economic business case for it.
http://geniusnet.blogtown.co.nz/2007/06/22/broadband-treading-water/
Having expressed these concerns on a number of occasions in various fora, it was most heartening to see last week that the NZI have stepped into the fray by framing the issues in straightforward terms for us all.
I particularly like the way in which they talk about shifting the debate away from regulatory and technical issues towards adopting a transformational mindset about what change is needed. The paper also refers to The Economist Intelligence Unit prediction that broadband could contribute 10% to GDP. These figures are often held up by the Minister. But let’s not forget that this is just model data and is not infallible because NZ has quite a unique set of geographic and economic circumstances. The truth is that nobody really knows what the real value add might be.
More hard work to be done, but it’s a jolly good start.