Stewart Island achieves NZ first with broadband

ATTENTION: Chief Reporter 14 April 2003

Stewart Island achieves New Zealand first with Telecom broadband

Half Moon Bay in Stewart Island is set to become New Zealand’s and potentially the world’s most southern town to have broadband fast Internet.

Half Moon Bay is one of 10 Southland towns set to have their exchanges enabled to receive Telecom broadband in late May this year. The remaining towns are Bluff, Edendale, Lumsden, Makarewa, Otautau, Otatara, Riverton, Tuatapere and Wyndham.

The work will result in more than 38,000 business and residential lines having access to broadband, increasing coverage of the region from 70 percent to more than 80 percent.
Telecom has already broadband-enabled exchanges in Gore, Invercargill, Invercargill East, Invercargill South, Mataura, Te Anau, Waikiwi and Winton.

Working with BCL it is anticipated that coverage will be extended to more than 90 percent of the region by late this year, Telecom Regional Sales Manager Paul Deavoll said.

Half Moon Bay is connected with a Telecom radio link from Bluff Hill and like the other exchanges will be enabled by installing the technology at the local exchange.

Broadband has download speeds up to 50 times faster than the standard dial-up connection so surfing web pages for research or downloading software and large files is much more efficient.

Users do not need to dial up each time they want to check their emails, and can talk on the phone or send a fax at the same time as they are logged onto the Internet, using one phone line.

“As well as being fast, Telecom’s broadband service, JetStream, can also be more economical for business because they pay for usage, not time spent online, and with just one connection multiple users can access the Internet simultaneously,” Mr Deavoll said.

Broadband also provides access to other services such as video-conferencing or allows companies to set up their own private network so staff in different locations can have online access to shared resources while still maintaining security.

“For example Southland Boys’ High School has recently joined Otago.net - a virtual private network which includes 16 Otago secondary schools and The Correspondence School,” Mr Deavoll said.

Southland Boys’ aims to increase the number the subjects available to students by video-conferencing with teachers at other secondary schools, as well as share resources and information.

Otago.net includes firewall protection from hacking; URL blocking to restrict access to inappropriate sites; plus virus and content scanning of all information within the private network and brought in from outside.

Businesses or residents wanting to find out more about Telecom’s broadband service JetStream can visit www.telecom.co.nz or contact 123 for residential customers or 126 for businesses.

ENDS

© Scoop Media