KEY POINTS:
New Zealand's broadband network performance is lagging behind benchmark western European countries, but moves over the past 2 1/2 years - including the forced regulation of Telecom - means it is in a good position to catch up, a telecommunications conference has heard.
Michael Cranna, managing director of Epitiro Technologies, told the Tel.Con 9 conference in Auckland yesterday the country has come a long way but broadband policy should shift from a focus on penetration to speed.
Cardiff-headquartered Epitiro is a global broadband benchmarking specialist with offices in Auckland and 11 lab sites in main centres around New Zealand.
Cranna said New Zealand's current average broadband network speed is 3.0MBps and its non-cached http download speed is comparable to the United Kingdom but behind Australia.
The result could have been worse but was quite close to the benchmark, he said. And the country stands to benefit from the changes in the landscape brought on by the forced regulation of Telecom, unlike in Australia, where it was "open warfare".
"We have been incredibly lucky to have removed the 400-pound gorilla and turned it into the good guy," said Cranna, the former head of market insight at Telecom.
Next generation technology, such as Very High Speed DSL which will enable speeds of 50MBps from the street and 100MBps in multi-tenant buildings, was being rolled out by Vodafone and Orcon this year.
"We're not lagging behind the world there. We're there."
VDSL has been tipped to be the prime technology to thrust broadband network development forward in western Europe.
It has been estimated 20 per cent of all broadband technologies in western Europe will be VDSL by 2011 - up from 1 per cent in 2006.
But Cranna said it was unlikely the take up rate will be similar here.
