Recent Government announcements indicate that most New Zealand homes and businesses can look forward to being able to access the internet at vastly increased speeds within the next few years.

Budget Commitment
The Government has announced a commitment to spend tens of millions of dollars to provide provincial and rural communities with high speed internet access, as part of its budget for the next financial year. Telecommunications suppliers will be asked to tender on a regional basis to provide these services. The budget allocation anticipates fast internet access for all schools and some businesses, which will be provided on a region by region basis, with the country divided into 10-20 broadband regions.

Regional Access to Broadband
A key Government concern is to ensure that appropriately high speed internet access is provided in order to facilitate (for example) two-way video conferencing to provide new distance learning opportunities for rural schools. A November 2001 OECD report ranked New Zealand 20th of the 30 OECD countries in terms of broadband penetration.

Although the earliest beneficiaries of the broadband roll out will be schools, the Government has indicated that access to high speed internet will also benefit local businesses and government departments. The Government's objective is that the majority of schools will have access to high speed two-way internet by the end of 2003, with the infrastructure being made available to remote schools by the end of 2004.

The Importance of Broadband
The ability of the technology sector to grow in New Zealand is dependant on the training and development of people and the upskilling of the nation as a whole in relation to technology-based matters. The availability of high speed internet to all schools will enable schools to make the most of new technology resources and will expose students (who would otherwise not have access to such technologies) to gain skills through training opportunities not previously available to them. Businesses throughout the country, especially in rural areas, will benefit from the ability to access internet at speeds currently available only to businesses in the larger cities.

The Government has indicated that it will not entertain proposals under which one supplier provides a nationwide solution (rather than several suppliers providing potentially different solutions). Clearly this is a sensible approach as different regions (and certain areas within regions) will likely require different approaches. (For example, a mix of wireless radio, fixed line and satellite systems, depending on the geography and population spread in the particular region).

Possible tenderers for one or more of the regions include: