KEY POINTS:
As New Zealand looks at boosting its broadband infrastructure, the focus is usually on doing so through a fibre-optic network. Where can wireless broadband play?
It's not going to be economically viable to run fibre out everywhere. There will be places around the country where wireless will be a great complement to the fixed line network. And it may be that there are some areas in the country where they need to use satellite because not even
wireless can reach them. It's about looking at all these different access technologies and working out which is the most economically viable to deliver the service.
Has the wireless option had enough of a voice in the debate so far?
The focus is definitely on fibre and not so much on wireless. I'm not surprised about that. There are already good wireless networks across New Zealand and they're just going to continue to get better and better of their own accord.
It seems to be that the fixed network is the one that is lagging from an investment point of view. That's why the focus tends to be more on the fixed network.
With Telecom launching a new high-speed WCDMA mobile network this year and Vodafone also investing in speeding up its network, how will the mobile market in New Zealand change?
I think the New Zealand market will change dramatically over the next 12 to 24 months. It will lead to a lot more competition than there is today. There will be new offerings and price competition which will help stimulate the market even more than we've seen to date. And with data speeds going up and devices getting cheaper and easier to use at the same, the service offering to consumers is going to become much, much better that what we're used to today.
Are there any particular services you expect will take off over the next year or two?
I think the biggest thing is going to be the ability for you to do what you want to do where you want to do it. Mobile broadcasting is an opportunity in conjunction with this. The biggest challenge for the mobile broadcast technologies is that they need spectrum and in most countries spectrum is not currently available, but it will become available over time.
As it becomes available we will see a growing market for mobile broadcast around the world and I think its applicability here in New Zealand is the same as anywhere. Everybody wants to watch the All Blacks playing, wherever they are.
Given its small size, will the mobile handset ever become the TV viewing device of choice?
It's a difficult question. I don't know that it will become the screen of choice per se. I think for some people it may well do. It gets back to giving you the ability to do what you want to do, when you want to do it.
When you're out and about it may well be the screen of choice to watch content on. When you're at home it may not be because you may want to watch that content on the plasma TV you've got on your wall.
Having said that, the content for that plasma screen may come out of your mobile device. You may take the mobile device, plug it into a docking station and have the content streamed out of the mobile device.
What other technology changes do you expect to see over the next few years?
The range of devices that we see in the marketplace is going to grow. At the moment you have two categories of wirelessly enabled devices: phones/PDAs and wirelessly enabled laptops. I think we're going to end up having other devices that sit in between to close that gap.
The reason that's important is it will open up new market niches and will increase the possibilities for how people live and work.
The next four years are going to see huge changes, far bigger than anything we've seen in the wireless world to date. Potentially, the data speeds here in four years' time could be as high as 280 megabits per second (Mbps).
And even if the average throughput is only a third of that, that's still over 90 Mbps over a wireless device. Think of all the things you could do with that. It's just absolutely mind-boggling.
