Article
FTTH the right choice: NZ IT minister | ZDNet
My Comments
Australia, France and a few other countries are implementing fibre-to-the-premises technology as their mainstay next-generation broadband networks. Similarly, some local “real-broadband enablement” deployments in some country towns like Hambleton in the UK have set up for this technology.
Similarly, those countries who have established fibre-copper next-generation broadband services, like the VDSL network in Germany and the fibre-to-the-cabinet deployments in the UK, have shown interest in the FTTP technology in some limited-area or pilot deployments.
Now New Zealand have shown interest in creating a next-generation broadband network. This time, they have headed for the fibre-to-the-premises technology rather than the cheaper fibre-copper technologies. Of course, the rural areas would be serviced with fibre-copper or fixed-wireless setups rather than the all-fibre solution.
The New Zealand Communications Minister, Amy Adams, had gone on record that she stood for the technology. She stood for it because there is better fiscal sense in rolling out this kind of network because of it being future-proof, rather than retrofitting the fibre-copper network to an all-fibre setup at a later stage in the network’s service life. This was raised as part of discussions with the Australian Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy regarding trans-Tasman communications, including capping the cost of mobile-phone roaming between Australia and New Zealand.
The country may also have other requirements that are particular of multi-island nations. Here, it would need to benefit from higher-bandwidth
But, in my honest opinion, that country does need to improve on competitive Internet access. It is because I have heard that the New-Zealand broadband services are more expensive compared to Australia and other main Internet markets. The problem is more so with international access streams ran by other operators so that the retain ISPs there can buy cheaper bandwidth and onsell it to the New-Zealand public.
