Fibre Rollout Announcement

Finally THE announcement we have been waiting for that will get the ball rolling!

http://www.med.govt.nz/templates/ContentTopicSummary____41902.aspx

http://www.med.govt.nz/templates/MultipageDocumentTOC____41865.aspx

“ Key highlights

Key highlights of the government’ proposal include:

• An open, competitive partner selection process.
• Government investment will be directed to an open access, passive fibre network infrastructure.
• A new Crown-owned investment company ('Crown Fibre Holdings') will be operational by October, which will carry out the government’s partner selection process and manage the government’s investment in fibre networks.
• Crown Fibre Holdings will establish with private sector partners a 'Local Fibre Company' (LFC) in each region, to deploy fibre network infrastructure and provide access to dark fibre products and, optionally, certain active wholesale Layer 2 services.
• The Government is open to national proposals and proposals aggregating any combination of LFC regions.
• Expansion from 25 to 33 candidate coverage areas based on the largest urban areas (by population in 2021).
• LFCs will be required from day one to be open networks facilitating access to their infrastructure on an equivalent basis to all users.
• LFCs cannot be controlled by any party who also operates as a telecommunications retailer.”

So for rural areas (all of our TaraNet schools) which are not represented in the candidate areas (Hawera & New Plymouth):

“It is important to note that the absence of a population centre from the list does not mean that investment proposals covering those centres will not be considered. As discussed above, CFH will have the flexibility to consider economically rational proposals that include other population centres. In addition, the government is releasing a separate strategy for improving rural broadband. In general terms, it is not intended that the government’s UFB Initiative funding will be directed into rural areas.”

So is this the separate strategy? Time to go back to the drawing board & revisit our earlier discussions?

The official release with some Q & A