KEY POINTS:
The push for speedier internet pits Labour's approach - detailed, sensible, but low-key - against National's visionary but undeveloped proposal for an expensive taxpayer-backed rollout of fibre optic cable.
Labour would extend funding for projects using different methods - via mobile phones and wireless, as well as fibre. National's plan takes $1.5 billion of taxpayer money to encourage private sector investment, so New Zealand can leap straight to ultra-fast fibre optic cable to 75 per cent of homes.
The biggest questions are whether the National proposal is a smart use of taxpayers' money and whether it will attract large-scale private sector investment. Now there's the added question of whether the taxpayer-funded spend-up will survive the economic downturn.
While the practicalities of implementation are one issue, the difference between the two parties comes down to whether fibre optic cable direct to homes is the best way to meet the country's needs.
A consumer body, the Telecommunications Users Association (Tuanz), has backed National's plan, arguing that technology is moving fast and New Zealand needs to go to the Rolls-Royce option to catch up.
But other observers question whether the cost of laying cables to residential areas will be recovered through greater business productivity - or just result in people watching more online movies from home.
National insists that its venture will be open source - available to allcomers, like Labour's plan.
But critics say that in practice only Telecom will be able to implement the system, bolstering its dominance of the telecommunications industry.
As for Labour, the highlight of its plan is expenditure of $325 million over five years through the framework of a Broadband Investment Fund based on contestable grants available to any legal entity, including local government, power and phone companies, and community groups. Tuanz complained that the administration involved would be complex and slow.
