Central Thames and St John gain access to high-speed broadband

A grant from our Council has allowed a fibre optic cable to be laid to the St John station at the north end of Thames, greatly benefitting their operations. And, a wireless broadband site has been installed on the roof that can pump wireless broadband into central Thames.

The fibre connection was laid thanks to a $15,000 grant from our Council. Chorus installed the line in January.

A second wireless site has also been installed on the roof of the Post Office that picks up the high-speed wireless link from the St John site, further distributing the wireless coverage through Thames.

Bruce MacDonald, the St John District Operations Manager for Hauraki and the Coromandel, says the ultra-fast broadband now available through the fibre connection has made a huge difference to their operations.

"We can have 15 to 17 people working flat-out on computers at the same time and on the old system it was hair-pulling," he says.

"No business would want to operate like that," Mr MacDonald says.

"On the old ADSL (asymmetric digital subscriber line - delivered over copper phone lines with a limited bandwidth available) connection it would take too long to open the applications we use that provide us with information to help us make decisions. With the fibre-optic connection the applications open instantly and we can make decisions instantly when we are managing emergency incidents."

Mr MacDonald also says in the past when they used teleconferencing to help manage emergency events, the audio was poor quality because it was using a lot of bandwidth and staff wouldn't be able to work on their computers. "It was severely restricting our communications," he says.

"And we now have the option of video-conferencing, which we couldn't do before. This will save a lot of travel - it's quicker and more efficient," he says.

Waikato company providing wireless link

Hamilton-based wireless internet service provider Lightwire is the company behind the wireless broadband sites on the St John station and on the Post Office.

"The network provides a dramatic improvement in performance over a VDSL connection," says Lightwire founder and Rural Development Manager Murray Pearson.

VDSL is very-fast broadband and is faster than ADSL. Both are delivered over copper phone lines, as opposed to the wireless broadband Lightwire provides.

"These wireless sites have been engineered to perform a lot better in the constrained space of Thames," Dr. Pearson says.

"It has a range of about one to two kilometres," he says.

Potential Lightwire subscribers will need to have a direct line-of-sight from their premises to either the Post Office or the St John wireless broadband sites in order to receive the signal.

"The receiver dish for subscribers is smaller than a Sky dish," says Lightwire Field Technician Aleks Skomski, who installed the antenna at the Thames St John headquarters in late January. The Post Office site was installed on Wednesday 3 February.

The Council grant is a form of co-investment in broadband services that is aimed at providing the infrastructure that businesses and residents in the Coromandel need to prosper.

High-speed broadband is essential to many businesses - just as it is to St John - and makes it possible for many people to work from home or from a holiday home they might have in the Coromandel.

Our Council has put in for funding under the Government's Ultra Fast Broadband and Rural Broadband initiatives. Local authorities, such as TCDC, are required to demonstrate that they are willing to support broadband rollouts in their areas, and this latest co-investment is part of that.

Last year, Council funding allowed a telecoms cabinet in Kopu to be upgraded with a fibre-optic connection much sooner than Chorus had scheduled. This is now providing much-faster broadband to Kopu area residents and businesses over the copper phone lines that emanate from that cabinet.

For more on what we're doing to improve broadband in the Coromandel, see our web page www.tcdc.govt.nz/rbi

On this new Thames connection Lightwire is offering a Home Internet Plan for $99/month (400GB) and Business Plans from $150/month.

These business plans can be catered to suit your business’s needs. To get more information please contact the Lightwire Helpdesk on 0800 12 13 14 or email support@lightwire.co.nz and mention you’d like to discuss their Thames offering.

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