Blandwidth

Two years ago I went rural (12km out of a small town) …. and onto dial up – flashback to 1995. Images sloooowly rolling down the page, buffering audio and video, overnight uploads to flickr, 7 hour software downloads, complaints from the family that we never answer the phone and probably hardest, no more skype.

A month ago I moved again, 25km from a (for NZ) large city. I was hopeful – I sent out skype invitations to my friends and family, I counted the days till I could begin my Second Life, I thought about what an interactive blog I would create…

I remain on dial up. Rejected by Telecom and EOL and with a Telecom Aircard that doesn’t work, my next hope is Netsmart. They have been out twice to see if they can lock us onto a router on the neighbouring hill but Tawhirimatea had other ideas. No way the man could clamber on our roof.

The frustration has driven me to start my blog even though I am on dial up. As Dave Warlick blogs about concerns that average speeds in the US are 1.9mbps compared to Japan’s 61 mpbs or Korea’s 45mbps, I languish on 48kpbs.

My question is how about the rest of New Zealand? Anecdotally, I think it is way behind other countries that I visit. My neighbouring school is on dial up. I had a conversation with a colleague about another school which was on dial up with only one teacher on broadband and she had to download all the software updates. Hard evidence? I heard a news report this morning talking about NZ having 60% take up for internet but how many are on high-speed? This article a couple of weeks ago suggested that dial up is far more common.

In figures released last year, Statistics New Zealand said over one-third of Kiwi homes were internet-connected, but the most common speed was still a dial-up speed of 64 kilobits (thousands of bits) a second.

The news report this morning (no source given – it was ZM Radio) was very self-congratulatory, exclaiming that NZ’s high take up of the internet was no surprise due to the state of the art banking system. What state-of-the-art banking system? Certainly not in terms of online banking in the case of my bank. Are they as I suspect referring to the ubiquitous roll out of EFTPOS way back when?

Do I sound like a whinging Pom?

My point is that I really worry about the impact this situation is having on our students, particularly those in rural areas. Not to mention NZ’s competitiveness in the global market place. So it isn’t just all about me…

I’m going to google online petition tools. I can feel one coming on. Time to lobby.

PS. I only learnt about Tawhirimatea today whilst listening to an incredibly inspiring interview on National Radio with two young women who have just won the Best Maori Women in Business Award

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