Farmers wary of Telecom's broadband advances

By PETER GRIFFIN

Telecom is cosying up to the rural sector as it seeks to push broadband into the backblocks, but farmers remain sceptical and are reluctant to pay a premium for the new services.

Amid the annual bustle of Fieldays at Mystery Creek, Telecom said it had signed a $1 million sponsorship deal with the National Fieldays Society to develop a "virtual Fieldays" strategy over the next three years.

It would be a showcase for new agricultural developments and an online marketplace for farmers.

The telco has had a large presence at the "e-farming" themed Fieldays this year, displaying its products and drumming up interest in FonterraNet - a joint venture with Fonterra targeting the dairy company's 13,000 farmers with a range of broadband services.

Speaking at Fieldays yesterday, Telecom rural solutions manager Seagar Mason said Telecom had put $350 million into improving communications in provincial New Zealand in the past decade.

"The e-farming engine is revving, it's time to put New Zealand in gear and move ahead, at high speed," he enthused at a press conference.

But Tony St Clair, chief executive of Federated Farmers, said Telecom's plan of getting broadband to 80 per cent of rural homes by June next year was optimistic when farmers already faced degraded service from the copper lines that would underpin the broadband push.

"Eighty per cent coverage of what? They're not replacing the copper wires. Over huge tracts of New Zealand there is no adequate coverage."

Federated Farmers was inundated with internet disaster stories from farmers using the web to communicate with the organisation.

"We don't email out any documents over 12 pages in length any more and we remove all logos."

St Clair said the importance of farming to New Zealand's economy meant the sector warranted more infrastructure investment in communications. "Since 1984 the farming sector has grown on average by 4 per cent. The rest of the economy can only manage 0.9 per cent."

He said more pressure had to be brought to bear on Telecom to better serve rural areas, pointing to the A$231 million ($264 million) Telstra last week pledged to spend on upgrading phone lines and extending mobile coverage in rural Australia.

Telstra is hurrying to improve access in the bush because its sale by the Federal Government hinges on a minimum level of service being provided in outlying areas.

Telecom chief executive Theresa Gattung said yesterday that $30 million would be spent by the company in the next 12 months on expanding 027 network coverage.

Telecom also unveiled a five-step plan to combat phone line interference from electric fences.

Kevin Wooding, a Te Awamutu farmer and chairman of Dairy Farmers of New Zealand, said that despite living in a relatively central area, mobile phone coverage was patchy and dial-up internet access was slow and unreliable.

"We leave the computer running overnight to download information. You get sick of waiting."

Wooding could see the benefits of faster connections, but "we're not going to pay more than our town counterparts".

The sprawling Fieldays campus certainly showed this year that farmers are embracing technology. A number of exhibitors specialised in productivity software.

GPS (global positioning system) based devices were being used to calculate areas to be sprayed with weed-killer or fertiliser. Fonterra's milk trucks transmit milk statistics back to base via satellite. Farmers can see their statistics on Fencepost.com before the tanker has left.

Andrew Watters, who manages a herd of 550 cows in the Wairarapa, said farmers were like any other businessmen and would take up Telecom's new products only if they improved productivity.

Watters, who was judged 2003 Sharemilker of the Year, uses a Palm Pilot around the farm to note information about his animals and upload it to his computer database.

Roger Avery of Masterton farming software developer Computer Concepts said dairy farmers were the most enthusiastic about technology.

Generally dairy farmers were younger, had a higher debt loading and needed to access more sophisticated productivity data.

www.telecom.co.nz/rural