Late last week Labour announced its plans to invest a further $60 million into rural internet infrastructure for capacity and backhaul upgrades, and $10m for rural wireless spectrum connectivity.
This comes on top of the $50m announced out of the $3 billion covid fund in March to increase rural internet capacity. A further $15m was also committed to building more cell towers.
“Both parties have committed to ensuring rural internet continues to be upgraded, but we would probably give a slight edge to the Nats, although opposition parties can be a bit less specific when it comes to making promises,” Technology Users Association of NZ (TAUNZ) chief executive Craig Young said.
The National party says by 2030 it intends to have an additional 50,000 rural homes on the high speed 100Mbps fibre network, taking the national coverage of ultrafast broadband fibre to 90%. The party would commit $1bn to achieve this.
This has been questioned on grounds of cost by both TUANZ and the wireless providers association as alternative methods of internet delivery may be more cost effective for more remote parts of the country.
“But the Nats have that target of 100Mbps and have at least put a line in the sand about what they want to achieve, and that is not just through fibre,” he said.
His concern was Labour’s spend was not looking much beyond the next electoral cycle, when a bigger picture view was required as the infrastructure advanced beyond the second stage of the Rural Broadband Initiative (RBI 2).
“We are wanting to see a 10-year plan,” he said.
Estimates are the rural broadband network will require about $50m investment a year just to keep standing still.
TUANZ has been holding a series of workshops around NZ to gather more feedback on a plan to take to whatever government comes to power.
Young says the business case for investment into rural broadband would always be a difficult one. From a demand perspective, he says there needed to be even more to get players to continue to invest more, and TUANZ was seeking ideas on this.
On the supply side, there was a need to ensure the Government continues to put public money into networks to keep up its quality and capacity.
A further $10m promised by Labour to secure wireless spectrum for rural connectivity has also been welcomed by the Wireless Internet Providers Association (WISPA).
The association has maintained regionally allocated spectrum is key for every region, ensuring smaller regions do not miss out to larger more economically powerful ones.
“Spectrum is crucial to meeting the ever-increasing demand for bandwidth, driven by increasing automation of farm systems and general internet usage, and accelerated by increased online study and work from home,” WISPA chair Mike Smith said.
Adding the devil remained in the detail about how widely spread among regions the funds would be allocated.
“But certainly we have had $110m allocated this year, plus $10m for spectrum, that is not a bad signal at election year,” he said.
Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs Kris Faafoi says the $50m committed in March will commence within 12 months of funding being approved, and Crown Infrastructure Partners is currently finalising contracting with service providers for the towers to be built from the $15m. These are expected to take between two and six months.
