Broadband may be on its way
The more I work with and write about the Internet the more acutely painful is my sense of how many people in this country do not have access to good broadband connections.
It’s not really so long ago that people (in Europe) would have to go down to the local village well or pump to collect water. Now those of use in the industrialised world take it absolutely for granted that we have hot and cold running water literally on tap in numerous places around our homes and workplaces. It’s inconceivable that we would not enjoy instant clean running water.
In the early 90s having an Internet connection was rare, and involved hours of waiting to send and receive even tiny amounts of data. It was the information equivalent of drawing water at the well: get the bucket, go out into the world, collect the precious resource, come home, use it.
Broadband is connection ‘on tap’: click here to buy a book, click there to download some new software, click again to enjoy a free video chat with your loved ones across the world. No preparation. No frustrating connection waits. Broadband is instant-on, instant use, immediate. It’s become an essential utility, like clean water and electricity.
Things move fast in the world of Internet: we need everyone in New Zealand to have access to fast Internet connections that work well and don’t cost a fortune.
And now, finally, things are looking up, for 80% of us, at least:
Telecom’s new chief executive Paul Reynolds … announced Telecom would invest $1.4 billion (three times what it had previously said it was prepared to stump up) in extending the reach of its ADSL2+ technology so that 80 per cent of New Zealanders could have access to broadband at speeds of up to 20 megabits per second by 2011.
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