Anthony Doesburg: Lamb chops good, stifled broadband bad

We're an innovative lot, as we not infrequently like to remind ourselves. Early in our history we discovered how freezing the meat we grew meant it could be shipped to far-off customers. So for a century or so, frozen lamb exports were a mainstay of the economy.

The internet promised a similar breakthrough. A network that stretched to all corners of the world would allow us to export new types of products - ones based on brain power, rather than farmers' sweat.

First, the Government and its Knowledge Wave talkfests tried to get us thinking about the new economy. Then, in the spirit of innovation that allowed the British to enjoy roast New Zealand lamb, the Telecommunications Users Association (Tuanz) attempted to spark ideas for applications that would use the high-speed internet whose arrival was imminent.

Tuanz's mission was to drag New Zealand into the top half of OECD countries for ICT use. It assumed that the obstacle to unlocking our broadband potential would not be an inability to get high-speed internet access, but a lack of applications.

In November 2002, it launched a National Broadband Applications Project, part of its lofty goal of giving all New Zealanders the benefit of broadband internet access. Tuanz assembled nearly 300 sector group leaders, Government officials and ICT company representatives in Nelson for 48 hours of brainstorming. Ten sector groups (tourism, education, media, etc) were sent off to different corners of the venue by association chief Ernie Newman to dream of applications for a network unconstrained by data caps or bandwidth.

They duly dreamed, and came back with dozens of ideas - some of which were almost certainly feasible. A brief sample: tourism would be enriched by personalised information projected on to a visitor's sunglasses as he or she peered at some attraction or other; as the adventure traveller bungy-jumped into the Kawarau Gorge, the experience would be relayed live to family and friends watching on a TV screen on the other side of the world; news organisations that produce a newspaper only once a day or broadcast a handful of bulletins would disappear as individuals adopted virtual journalists (in the form of electronic agents) to report to them on events they were interested in when and where they happened.

Oh what a glorious future.

But, three years on, in the future they remain. It's not that the technology isn't up to the job.

The virtual bungy-jump, for example, needs little more than a webcam and abundant internet bandwidth to send A. J. Hackett to new heights.

But there's the problem. Contrary to what Tuanz assumed three years ago, broadband internet access remains the exception, not the norm. New Zealand still sits near the bottom of the OECD's broadband rankings.

Ernie Newman thinks the country is fed up with waiting for affordable, fast internet access. He certainly is. And he sees what he thinks are hopeful signs that the Government's patience is also running out.

Patience with Telecom is what's in increasingly short supply. The telco will achieve a target agreed with the Commerce Commission of having 250,000 residential broadband connections by the end of the year. But it will almost certainly miss a second - but in competition terms, more important - target of providing 83,000 wholesale connections, consisting of the Telecom DSL service resold by other internet service providers.

Telecom variously blames free local calling, and rival TelstraClear's lukewarm attitude to reselling DSL, for our slow broadband uptake. TelstraClear and other ISPs respond that there's next to no profit for them in reselling DSL.

Newman is pinning his hopes of Government action on a statement by ICT Minister David Cunliffe last week, although a close look at his words show the minister left himself plenty of wriggle room. Addressing New Zealand's poor broadband uptake rate at a conference in Wellington, Cunliffe said the Government would do something about it next year.

In Newman's book, that has to mean measures to make Telecom start giving other ISPs a better deal. But Cunliffe was far from explicit.

He said he was looking again at the issue of local loop unbundling, which the Government was on the brink of imposing on Telecom 18 months ago. Instead, we got unbundled bitstream, the wholesale broadband market which is proving so unsatisfactory.

Could this be the Government's opportunity to do something innovative? Instead of bothering with a belated local loop unbundling decree, there's support among ISPs for the Government to force Telecom's wholesale and retail arms apart, with separate organisations running each. That, the theory goes, would mean fair competition. In its wake would come cheaper broadband, and an explosion in demand. Consumers would benefit. ISPs would benefit. Even Telecom would benefit.

Isn't that an idea at least as worthy as frozen lamb?