In a TUANZ “After 5s” session in Wellington on Monday, March 21st, both the MED and Telecom came out to talk about the proposed Telecom/Vodafone RBI solution. One of the points made by Telecom is that while all new RBI fibre would be available to all comers as dark fibre, existing Telecom fibre would be restricted to “layer 2” wholesale services. Telecom says that their older fibre may not have enough cores for other users, may not have break-out pits in the right place, and really was only ever intended for use by Telecom.

Access to inexpensive dark fibre in rural New Zealand is a huge issue for alternative telecommunications providers. Rural areas are not large enough to support natural competition. The requirement for an alternative provider to purchase wholesale L2 services from an incumbent is enough to keep them out – either due to slow/no service provision or predatory pricing.
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From the advent of commercial radio it was recognized that rural radio and wireless communications were important to the development of the New Zealand. By the mid 1930s the government was already providing direct subsidies to broadcast radio operators in rural areas around the country in order to ensure universal coverage. The small number of commercial radio sites was expanded during a time of government administration of broadcasting from the mid 1930s through the early 1960s. The New Zealand Post Office increased again the amount of rural sites when it established mobile radio services in the late 1940s. Through the 1980s, rural radio broadcast and telecommunications sites enjoyed continued improvement and maintenance, to the benefit of rural areas that would not be economic to service otherwise.

With the split of telecommunications from the Post Office portfolio, and its sale to Telecom New Zealand, rural telecommunications towers came in to private ownership. Similarly with the corporatization of Broadcast Communications Limited (now known as Kordia) rural broadcast towers fell to management under a company required to turn a profit. These corporatization efforts have resulted in a low level of continued investment in rural towers, for a number of reasons.
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How much do Internet users download every month? How is this likely to change as the Internet becomes more a part of daily life? How far below the curve are Australia and New Zealand, compared to the rest of the world – and why? Today’s post talks about traffic demands, bitcaps, and what it all means.

In most of the world, broadband plans are sold by download and upload speed, with no restrictions on the amount of traffic consumed. This has allowed for the Internet to become a viable delivery method for music and video, increasingly via legal means since the emergence of Netflix Streaming, Hulu, and YouTube. This isn’t the case everywhere, as I’ll explain below.
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