New technology, providing innovative solutions to the challenges and demands we all face today, is exciting.
We want to embrace it, adopt and adapt this technology to our needs.
To do so, both internet and cell phone infrastructure and services are required.
The promoters of such digital technology, irrespective of sector application, have yet to address the first elephant in the room.
Mobile digital technology is not going to deliver the results many promote if we do not have the right integrated infrastructure in place across the landscape.
Secondly, the assumption by many who design services, contracts and digital technology that we all have access to mobile digital connectivity is simply not true.
Many rural people, including some dairy farmers, would be happy if they could simply be able to receive the bank code sent by text message to complete their online banking transaction or be able to make and receive cell phone calls, as that is the way society expects to operate now – having such a basic service would be significant and we need better than that.
The reality is that all the talk of digital technology providing solutions for many of us in rural NZ is pie-in-the-sky, idealistic dreaming while we continue the implementation of poorly designed infrastructure that does not deliver what society needs to function.
We don’t want to be delivered partial solutions that limit us and make us second class citizens in our own homeland.
The impact from the lack of effective and efficient telecommunications infrastructure is creating huge disadvantages for provincial economic growth and putting enormous pressure on rural community health and wellbeing.
A new approach needs to be implemented.
This new approach needs to be driven from the ground up, supported from the top down and enabled by everyone in between.
There are three components to this new approach:
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The need for a rural lens through which we understand the problems and the needs of telecommunication infrastructure and services in rural NZ.
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The urban-centric lens that has been applied from central goverment policy-setting through to the implementation of RBI2 is an approach that is:
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Narrow in its policy setting and scope;
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Does not consider a systems design for all digital connectivity, for all of society across the landscape;
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Has a high weighting on population density – a significant disadvantage to our rural people and the businesses that serve them;
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A partial solution at best and;
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An inefficient and ineffective spend of taxpayer dollars.
We must use a rural lens to understand a rural systems context of telecommunications infrastructure, services and solutions.
Develop a rural-centric framework to enable the Government to make the right strategic infrastructure decisions for rural NZ.
This requires:
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A shift away from population density KPIs;
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A move to understanding and measuring how mobile digital infrastructure enables economic growth and development attributed to GDP and GNP, will aid improvements in the social health and wellbeing of our people, their families, local communities and towns and empowers our people to innovate, create and initiate new solutions, business and employment.
The need to truly collaborate to design a co-ordinated and integrated network across the landscape of rural NZ.
We are talking about actually working together, with respect for each other and the skills, knowledge and expertise we all bring to the table.
We accept that this is particularly difficult for government agencies, corporates and business trying to deliver under previous government policy settings and contracts.
However, where there is a will, there is a way.
When it comes to rural NZ the approach must have the big picture in mind and start with the needs of end-users both now and in the future.
We must build capacity in the system to cope with the exponential growth in demand that will come as people understand how they can use that infrastructure.
The current approach is a cop-out to rural NZ because the complexity of the problem is considered by some to be all too hard and expensive.
This approach will not deliver what rural NZ and society need.
In effect, the implementation of the current policy setting will be an inefficient use of taxpayer dollars.
We implore the Government and the whole telecommunications industry to work together with rural NZ people to apply a rural lens through which to understand the rural connectivity issues, develop a rural-centric framework for strategic decision-making and design an effective rural telecommunications infrastructure and service across the landscape.
We want to embrace, adopt and adapt technology.
To do so across all industries, sectors and society in rural NZ we must have the appropriate telecommunications infrastructure.
