Council budgets $1m for Wi-Fi service

By ADAM GIFFORD

The South Waikato District Council will spend up to $1 million on a joint venture with Rural Networks to introduce a Wi-Fi (802.11b) wireless internet service in the region.

Chief executive Dave Kelly said the council had so far spent just over $200,000 of an initial $250,000 set aside for a pilot scheme.

"Now the council has included in the annual plan the authority to spend up to $750,000 more from its investment fund to ensure things happen with this," Kelly said.

"I don't think that will be the real cost to ratepayers - we should get some back from revenues and we could bring in other shareholders."

The $20 million investment fund was set up with money the council got from selling its Power New Zealand shares, and has been used to subsidise rates and for economic development projects.

Kelly said the council was completing the structure of the joint venture company South Waikato Networks, which will own the infrastructure and run the business.

"The council is interested in the community owning some of this, perhaps through a co-operative structure," he said.

The failure of the joint venture to win the Probe contract to get wireless access to remote Waikato schools had not affected progress.

"If we had picked it up, it would have been a bonus - we'd never say no to free money."

Rural Networks has installed transmission equipment at about $100,000 a unit in Tokoroa and Putaruru and at Waotu, between the towns.

It had to build its own tower at Waotu rather than put its equipment on the nearby BCL tower because the state-owned transmission company prevaricated over a price for co-siting.

That is despite instructions from shareholding ministers that BCL, which is partnering with Telecom to introduce broadband services nationally, provide access to other companies.

Rural Networks technologist David Nicholson said BCL's stance added to the cost of providing the service.

BCL spokeswoman Anna Radford said there was a communication breakdown within the company over Rural Networks' co-siting request.

"We dropped the ball and were not able to meet their expectations to give them a price," Radford said.

"The door is not closed, though, and we will sit down with David Nicholson soon to talk about how we can work together in future."

He would not say how many customers were signed up so far, citing concerns about the marketing muscle Telecom is throwing into the region.

"Tokoroa is the only rural place where I have seen sales staff in suits walking around knocking on doors to sell Jetstream," Nicholson said.

Rural Networks had won over Jetstream customers with its $61.88 a month Presto data service. Presto is sold as a 64 kilobit per second (Kbps) service with no data cap, compared with Jetstream Starter's 128Kbps. Colin Heke, who runs web-hosting businesses including budgethost.co.nz from his Tokoroa home, said switching from dial-up to Presto had greatly increased productivity.

"I manage 1100 sites on servers in the US, so I am on the system 10 or 11 hours a day," Heke said.

"I can upload and download stuff close to the 64Kbps maximum. I have tried Jetstream at customer sites and this is much more efficient and much faster."

Heke, a retired computer programmer, at first opposed the council's involvement in the project because of what he had read about the limitations of 802.11b.

"It just goes to show you can't believe what you read."

Presto costs $60 to install and customers can use a simple USB-connected wireless gateway or an Ethernet version for businesses, which also includes a voice connection.