media release

16 December 2008

KAREN celebrates two successful years

Two years into its life KAREN has exceeded expectations, with REANNZ arguably now the government’s expert agency for smart and efficient purchasing of broadband, according to REANNZ CEO, Donald Clark.

December 15 2008 marked KAREN’s 2nd birthday, and Mr Clark used the opportunity to highlight its many impressive milestones.

• KAREN now has 56 connected member organisations and partners across the country. This is more than double than the same time last year.

• KAREN connects all New Zealand’s universities, Crown Research Institutes and the National Library, and has piloted a network for all the nation’s schools.

• Membership still growing, with the two primary research and education government agencies and many polytechnics now connected, as well as our national heritage icon Te Papa.

• Five private sector organisations have also joined, and are experiencing the benefits of using KAREN’s advanced connectivity to deliver innovative content and services to their research and education sector customers.

• Schools participating in the National Education Network trial have reported reported it as a wild success. One school commented, “We’ve had a wonderful time with this connection” after being able to connect their students with leading global thinkers in the US and Hong Kong. “They are even going to get their researchers looking into some of the suggestions our students made”.

• One of KAREN’s Content & Service Partners, TelstraClear, has just launched an innovative new service trial over KAREN – providing over 20 free-to-air television and radio channel streams direct to the desktops of KAREN members to support teaching and learning.

• REANNZ established a video conferencing service in response to demand from members for new services over KAREN. During November 2008 members used the KAREN video conferencing bridge for 1,200 hours, or the equivalent of 50 days. This usage excludes people direct video calling to each other.

• In November 2008 we reached a new milestone in the use of KAREN, with total traffic volume exceeding 300 Terabytes, or the equivalent of 60,000 DVDs. This represents a steady increase from 200 Terabytes of traffic achieved from July 2008.

“It now appears that the original goal for KAREN to be completely self-sustaining in just a few years was too ambitious. We have come further, faster than any similar international network in our start-up phase and are well on the way to covering our daily operating costs.”, says Mr Clark

“We are talking to our Government shareholders and members about the next phase of investment so that KAREN remains an advanced infrastructure asset for the country.”

ENDS