NZICT Welcomes Rural Broadband Coverage Targets

11 September 2009

NZICT Welcomes Rural Broadband Coverage Targets

NZICT Group today welcomed the rural broadband coverage targets announced by the Hon Steven Joyce, Minister for Communications and Information Technology.

Chief Executive Brett O’Riley said that ubiquitous access to broadband is going to be critical if New Zealand is going to take advantage of the social opportunities of improving education and health standards, and business opportunities like software as a service and cloud computing.

“When designing applications and solutions we want to be certain that as many end users as possible are getting the same experience in terms of speed and performance”, said Mr O’Riley.
NZICT see particular opportunities for the alternative delivery of public services, including health, education and training, which will drive major changes in productivity and skills development.
Under the announcement made by Minister Joyce, 93% of rural schools will receive fibre, enabling speeds of at least 100Mbps, with the remaining 7% to achieve speeds of at least 10Mbps.
“We believe this school roll-out is critical to improving New Zealand’s digital literacy. The ICT industry is planning to support this through joint initiatives with the Ministry of Education to enhance teacher’s professional development and to increase the number of digital devices available to students”, said Mr O’Riley.

“Initiatives like Computers in Homes and the Computer Clubhouse have also successfully demonstrated how you can step change learning and student academic performance through ICT; and our focus at NZICT is on enhancing and expanding these programmes in partnership with Government”.

Minister Joyce also announced that over 80% of rural households will have access to broadband with speeds of at least 5Mbps, with the remainder to achieve speeds of at least 1Mbps.

Mr O’Riley commented “this is equally important so students have access to broadband at home and at school, and families can participate directly in the digital economy”.

“In our broadband infrastructure submission NZICT emphasised the importance of closing the digital or broadband divide, so that initiatives our members and their customers undertake can impact digital literacy and capability across the whole country”.

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