While urban New Zealand is coming to rely more and more on fast access to the Internet, things are different in our rural hinterland. But help is at hand.
New Zealand’s Communications and IT Minister Steven Joyce yesterday announced the Government’s rural broadband strategy, a NZ$300 million package designed to deliver high speed, affordable broadband to over 80% of rural households, and over 90% of rural schools.
“Around half of rural households are coping with dial up speeds currently and that’s not good enough in the 21st century,” the Minister said.
So why is broadband so important these days?
As an urban user I’m seeing my life and habits changing to make use of the tools and applications available via my PC (PCs, nowadays). I run a small business, and accept payment via bank transfer. Most of my communication with clients is through email. I’m a bit of a social networker and enjoy online chatting with my friends. I do basically all my banking, and management of my utilities through the internet. Even my pension provider is urging me to connect with them online.
So if I was hundreds of kilometres from the nearest urban centre, on one of New Zealand’s vast tracts of sheep farmland, how on earth would I survive with a 56k dial-up connection? That’s what Landcorp, a state-owned NZ agribusiness which manages over 100 farms of more than 300,000ha, wants to know. Landcorp works hard to promote good, sustainable and profitable farming practice amongst its farmers. The main benefits Landcorp sees from their farmers having broadband access is the ease with which communication can be delivered, such as company information, sharing of ideas and practices between farmers (forums), video conferencing to save travel costs (both in dollar and energy terms), and allowing farmers to use online applications and services that are useful to any business, such as budgeting services, Inland Revenue filing and utilities.
Other beneficiaries of broadband to the rural sector will be the multitude of non-farming business ventures. The operator of an airline that runs out of a small rural centre commented that they do have broadband access, but at a much higher cost than for urban-based businesses. They rely on it for online booking facilities and a VoIP (voice over IP) phone system. This is costing them $75 - $100 more a month than the equivalent service in an urban centre.
The education sector will also benefit. The Minister detailed that 93% of rural schools will be connected via fibre optic cable, allowing them to access super high speed internet. My children’s urban school is just replacing half their PCs with higher specs because teachers are making so much use of online applications that the three-year-old PCs from the previous upgrade no longer cut the mustard. Teaching in many New Zealand schools has embraced the information superhighway (what a dated term that is now!), but technology is one of the big barriers to greater uptake.
Other than schools themselves, families and children in remote areas will benefit greatly from improved access. An education provider who oversees a large, sparsely populated geographical area described a family who farm in a remote part of her turf, who not only have young (primary and pre-school aged) children, but for whom English is a second language. Currently, it costs the equivalent of almost two months’ urban broadband rental for the educator to make a single round trip to visit this family. Internet technology can make the delivery of education tools far more efficient, again saving time and energy.
Who knows, in years to come, farmers may be out checking their far flung paddocks, wearing their bluetooth headsets, ordering stock feed and fencing materials using VoIP, while their children, back in the farmhouse, take part in a virtual classroom environment via video conferencing.
Tags: Bluetooth headset, broadband, phone system