Bidders vie for RBI2 rural broadband funding

RBI2 bidders offer distinct alternatives

Three groups made their plans public by the time Crown Fibre Holdings' Rural Broadband Initiative and Mobile Black Spot request for proposal closed on Monday.

Chorus, New Zealand's three mobile carriers acting together and a group of rural wireless broadband companies all say they are bidders.

Because the process is confidential, there could be other, as yet unannounced, bidders. While the details of each revealed proposal remain confidential, a clear picture has emerged.

$150 m for improved rural communications

The government has set aside $150 million to improve rural connectivity. Of that $100 million goes towards improving broadband services and $50 million is earmarked to fix mobile blackspots.

Chorus' pitch is all about extending the reach of its fixed-line network beyond urban New Zealand. The company says it is willing to work with others as it did when it combined with Vodafone for the original Rural Broadband Initiative.

Extending means building new fibre and maximising the use of existing fibre in rural areas. Chorus says there is also potential to improve the performance of existing fixed-line networks in rural areas. This could mean upgrading copper to VDSL or subsequent technologies. It says its fixed-line networks are not prone to congestion at busy times and don't need to use data caps to manage demand.

Up to 520 new rural cell sites

Mobile carriers Vodafone, Spark and 2degrees collectively offer a cellular approach that includes up to 520 new cell sites. This, they say, will extend the reach of today's cellular coverage by 25 percent. Their plan means not only will they share the towers, but they will also share antennae and spectrum.

Wispa, a coalition of small rural wireless ISPs has more modest aspirations. It aims to win up to $2 million from the fund for each of its 30 members. Spokesman Chris O'Connell says Wispa members already serve some 40,000 customers and in many cases deploy wireless broadband in areas bigger companies consider uneconomic.

Crown Fibre Holdings says it is now assessing the proposals before moving to negotiations with shortlisted suppliers. It hopes to announce contracts by July.

UFB means better primary school pass rates

"An extra 4600 primary school students will reach National Standards in reading, writing and maths each year thanks to the UFB network."

The NBR reports on a study carried out by Motu senior fellow Arthur Grimes. He looked at academic results for each state primary school before and after they received UFB.

Grimes says pass rates for the National Standard increases by about one percent. It means that on average about two extra children per primary school pass each of the three exams every year.

He says: "We found some evidence indicating that students at low decile schools benefit more than students at higher decile schools”.

2degrees offers unmetered mobile data

Unlimited data plans are standard fare for fixed-line broadband customers, but until now have not been available for mobile users. 2degrees has introduced a $129 account that unlimited calls, texts and mobile data.

The deal is for a limited time. 2degrees says the offer is a trial run. If it's not economic for the company then it will stop offering the deal.

There are conditions. The offer is for phones only. Customers cannot share their data, tether phones or use them as WiFi hotspots.

Unlimited mobile data plans have been common overseas for years. 2degrees is the first carrier to offer the plans in New Zealand.

Government, industry team for IoT

Communications minister Simon Bridges announced a government-industry alliance to examine the economic and social benefits of the internet of things. He says the technology could add hundreds of millions of dollars to the New Zealand economy.

The alliance is part of Bridges' drive to build a digital nation which is, in turn, part of the government's economic growth agenda. The idea is to establish New Zealand as “an adaptive and prosperous leading digital nation”.

Megaport opens Auckland Edgecast PoP

Megaport has opened a Verizon Edgecast self-provisioning CDN point of presence in Auckland.

The PoP will be use for live streaming and other data hungry applications. It can serve any Megaport customer in New Zealand and connects direct to partner networks.

Dunedin fibre still fastest, Rotorua accelerating

Gigatown Dunedin has fastest fixed-line internet users on the Chorus network with connection speeds in the city averaging 196 Mbps. North Shore is second with a 54Mbps. Third place Rotorua is a tick behind with 52Mbps, but speeds are rising faster there than anywhere else. Average speeds are almost 85 percent faster than a year ago.

Across the Chorus fibre network average download speeds climbed from 25Mbps in February 2016 to 41Mbps a year later.

Overall, the average download speed for households and small businesses on the Chorus network in February 2017 was 41Mbps compared with 25Mbps at the same time last year.

The number of households in Chorus areas on the UFB network has almost doubled in the last year. It is now at 21 percent. VDSL customer numbers are up five percent year-on-year and now account for 17 percent of connections.

US kills ISP consumer privacy

The Trump administration has overturned laws preventing US ISPs from, among other things, selling customer browsing habits.

The laws were put in place by the former Obama administration. They meant ISPs could not share or sell customer activity logs, including web browser histories, with first getting permission.

Critics of the rules argued they were unfair because tech companies, like Google and Facebook, don't need to get such permission before tracking customers' habits.