The working group have been toiling away and they have produced the first set of options for us to consider: implementation phase 1 [PDF 187 KB].
We are still organizing a site visit and meeting with Rural Link to look at their proposal, I will post details once they are finalized.
In the meantime, check out this document and leave any comments – or suggestions – that you have.
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
I finally managed to catch up with Ian Thomson last week. He had intended to accompany Neil to the first community meeting, but had been struck down by a bug and had to pass. In any event, Ian has a wealth of experience helping communities solve their broadband woes and is confident that we should be able to get something up and running in a matter of months, not years.
First, some background. Ian has been working closely with Tuhoe to build a 14 school, 25 Marae and 2000 home broadband network in the Urewera National Park. He has also built a couple of networks on Pacific Islands to get broadband into remote schools and villages and is currently working with the good folk of Miramar to get cheaper broadband into that community.
Anyway, after a bit of a chat about our circumstances up here, Ian reckoned that there were at least two viable options for us to consider (outside of any others that may already be on the table). Excuse my crude paraphrasing.
Ian recommended Rural Link as a supplier he has worked with in the past. He says they have the experience managing these sorts of networks and it would be no issue for them to get us up and running – once we sorted the governance out.
Ian has suggested that he and a Rural Link representative come out and talk to us, scope out the local terrain and then they will be in a position to provide more tailored advice about our options.
What do you all think? We could call another meeting and discuss these options in more detail…
Posted in editorial | Tagged broadband, governance, ian thomson, rural link | 2 Comments »
Last night we had the first meeting of the Horokiwi residents who are interested in getting broadband into the community. It has to be considered a success. We went in without (to be honest) much of a plan, but through a combination of the generosity of Neil de Wit from CityLink and the resolve of the people who attended, we have emerged with consensus about the next steps.
First up, a big thanks to Neil for taking time out after hours to come up the hill and talk to us. He wasn’t just generous with his expertise, but was a warm and entertaining presenter who stepped us through all of the options and quietly encouraged us to believe in our ability to make this happen.
A big thanks also to Kris and Jenny van der Merwe who opened up their home to the 20 people who were able to make it on the night (I had a couple of phone calls in the days before from other residents who weren’t able to attend but were keen to register their interest and to be kept in the loop). Jenny has also saved me a huge amount of typing by taking some detailed notes of the proceddings which you can download as a pdf [128 k].
For those of you who just want the high level summary:
If you couldn’t make the meeting and are interested in what we are proposing, leave a comment below. If you would like to pitch in and help, we would love to hear from you.
Posted in editorial | Tagged broadband, citylink, horokiwi, meeting, neil de wit | 2 Comments »
Well, we may not have much in the way of internet connectivity up here, but we certainly have social networking. I suggested to one of the long timers, Kris, that we have an old-fashioned ‘town hall’ and he jumped at the idea. An email went around the community list last week and, ladies and gentlemen, it looks like we will have a pretty solid turn out.
Neil de Wit, the managing director of CityLink, has very kindly agreed to come out in his own time and talk to us about the costs and logistics of installing our own fibre up the road.
As an aside, Neil has set the bar pretty high in terms of willingness to engage on this issue. I haven’t yet made any concerted effort to talk to anyone at Telecom or TelstraClear (other than their help desk staff), but I am willing to bet good money that no-one from either organization volunteers to come out and talk to us during the first phone call…
Anyway, the details of the meeting:
Email me if you want more details: jasonwryan@gmail.com.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged broadband, citylink, community, meeting, town hall | No Comments »
I have always thought that the best position to be in when you begin to argue a case is to have at least a passing acquaintance with the facts of the matter. This way, even if you are making a series of outrageous and completely unsubstantiated assertions, you at least have a pretty good idea of how far you are overextending yourself and are only then opening yourself up to accusations of, say, arrogance as opposed to stupidity…
So, in the interests of establishing some sort of empirical basis for my claims of outrageously poor service from the telcos, I tried this modem speed test. I make no assertions about its accuracy (I simply googled ‘modem speed test’ and clicked the link), but the results are both terrifying and strangely satisfying.
13120 bps! That is 13.12kbps. And for those of you that haven’t been around that long, that was the standard speed for accessing the internet in, oh, 1983…
Seriously, 13kbps is less than a quarter of the speed of ’standard’ dial-up, 56kbps and just under 20 times slower than what passes for broadband in most parts of New Zealand (256kbps). That is truly terrifying: it’s like being trapped in some alternate reality where people still huddle around the wireless on a sunday night and the telephone is a shared community resource.
The satisfying bit is that the speed test vindicates my rising sense of paranoia. I thought that the connection was slow, little did I dream that it isn’t just slow, it is positively glacial. Last night, I ironed a shirt, from start to finish, waiting for my Twitter page to load. Good god.
Oh, there is one upside: when I am connected (I use that term extremely loosely) to the Internet, I can turn on my speakers and hear radio (AM, I think) through the modem…
Posted in editorial | Tagged 13kbps, data, despair, modem, speed | 6 Comments »
Before we even entertained the idea of moving into a new house, I was adamant that the only condition that was non-negotiable for me was broadband access. By that I mean >256kbps. Not unreasonable, right? Living in Wellington, the IT capital of New Zealand…
So, we found this great place in Horokiwi: only 12-15 minutes from the centre of the city. Ideal. First order of business: ring my current provider, TelstraClear, and have this conversation with them:
Me: hi, can you tell me if there is broadband access at this address in Horokiwi?
TCCSP: let me check that for you…
(brief delay punctuated by the sounds of keyboard rattling…)
TCCSP: yes, sir, we have broadband coverage at that address.
Me: are you sure?
TCCSP: yes, sir.
Me: no, are you really sure?
TCCSP: according to our system, yes that address has broadband
Me: thanks
Now, not that I am overly cautious or risk-averse, but when we closed in on the deal and were about to make our final offer, I phoned back and had exactly the same conversation with another helpful TelstraClear Customer Service Person. 2 from 2. I was feeling much better about the move.
We move in, I plug in my router and ______ Nothing. No lights, no action, nothing. I am back onto TelstraClear and I am told that they just have to reset the port
. Two days later a technician says to me: I’ll just ring Telecom and get this sorted for you
. They ring me back no more than 10 minutes later:
TCCSP: Um, there seems to be a bit of a problem.
Me: (panic clenching at my throat): problem?
TCCSP: yes: Telecom say they have no capacity there.
Me: no capacity? What does that mean?
TCCSP: it means that there is no broadband. I am so very sorry.
Not half as $*#%ing sorry as I am…
Once I began to emerge from a profound state of shock, I asked myself: ‘How is this possible?’ Horokiwi is 10 minutes closer to Wellington than where we moved from; you would think that the availability of broadband would be determined by the proximity to the CBD as that is where there is the greatest demand – and economies of scale for the providers.
How can we possible aspire to be a knowledge economy when there are these sorts of inequities in the distribution of basic information infrastructure?
After shock, enter depression… Which was not at all alleviated by countless conversations with the various broadband, mobile and wireless providers operating in the lower north island. All to no avail. It is either 20kb/s dialup or hideously expensive satellite.
Slowly emerging from my torpor of disbelief, I began to see that if we wanted broadband in Horokiwi, then it is up to us — the community — to do something about it.
That is how this blog was conceived.
Posted in editorial | Tagged broadband, joke, telecom, telstraclear | 6 Comments »
