By SIMON COLLINS
The Government is stepping in to help New Zealand's research sector catch up with the computing and communications standards in the rest of the developed world.
Science Minister Pete Hodgson has told universities and research institutes that New Zealand researchers are falling behind their international peers in data-heavy areas such as biotechnology because of the cost of communication bandwidth and a lack of shared computing facilities.
The Ministry of Research, Science and Technology is setting up a project team to assess the research sector's information and communications technology infrastructure.
The move comes as the Next Generation Internet (NGI) consortium of 13 universities and high data users evaluates proposals from commercial operators for a dedicated research network linking institutions in the six university centres.
The consortium is due to decide this month whether to go with a preferred supplier such as Telecom or TelstraClear or to set up its own fibre network.
The consortium estimated last October that it might cost up to $50 million to build a new network or lease existing facilities during the first five years.
It proposed then to seek public funding for half this amount, equivalent to the $25 million which the Government is giving to a new business school at Auckland University.
The Partnerships for Excellence scheme, which was set up to justify the business school gift, offers grants for tertiary education projects including "improving information and communication technology provision".
NGI consortium chief executive Tone Borren said new technologies could make a research network feasible without the cost of laying new fibre.
"We have a number of different options that we are considering from different suppliers that would have quite different numbers associated with them," he said.
"It depends whether it's paid for by the usage or paid for by capital up-front."
The consortium report last October said that about 50 countries had already established high-bandwidth research networks. New Zealand universities said they were five years behind communications developments in the US and two to three years behind Australia.
The report said New Zealand was distinguished by "the almost total removal of government as a player in the telecommunications industry", leaving a competitive market which had failed to make bandwidth affordable for research institutions.
Ministry chief executive Dr James Buwalda said on Friday: "We are slipping behind the standard that is needed for us to engage efficiently in international research in areas such as bioinformatics and climate-change modelling - areas where there is a lot of shared data and high-speed processing.
"The way the telecommunications market works, it makes high-bandwidth access quite prohibitively expensive.
"Other countries have addressed that by looking for a solution specific to the research sector."
He said the solution was "not actually terribly expensive". The ministry was building a project team to assess the options.
"My expectation is that by the end of the year we should know whether we have a very expensive problem to fix or something that is fixable quite cheaply."
Overseas, state-backed research networks have won special deals by restricting users to research.
But NGI chairman Neil James of Otago University said the consortium wanted to make its New Zealand network available to other big data users such as biotech firms and film companies.
"We are a small country and it's not productive to maintain artificial boundaries. But that is a bit of a challenge for us," he said.
Australia's Aarnet research network has overcome this by carrying commercial data internally but diverting it to telecom companies at the international border.
James said there was plenty of fibre already laid in New Zealand, especially once new technology became available that could allow separate institutions to transmit on their own finely-defined wavelengths.
Some estimates suggested that only 5 per cent of the installed fibre capacity was being used.
But James said he was "not terribly optimistic" that Telecom or TelstraClear would make fibre available at an affordable price.
"Then we may need to cobble together bits of fibre from different people and perhaps put some in ourselves," he said.
The NGI consortium comprises New Zealand's eight universities plus AgResearch, the National Library, Natural History NZ, Internet NZ and the Wellington fibre network Citylink.
Borren said other crown research institutes, polytechnics, film companies and others were "in the wings" ready to join once the network began. The consortium aims to serve the six university centres by September, and to establish links to provincial cities later.
What is NGI?
* Next Generation Internet networks overseas currently transmit data at rates of up to 10 gigabits per second - about 20,000 times faster than the 512 kilobits per second that is being provided for schools.
* NGI is the first step towards a global terabit research network which, by 2006, will provide speeds of about 20 million times what is now available in schools.
* About 50 countries have established NGI research networks so far.
* New Zealand's NGI consortium plans to start servicing the six university centres by September, and to establish links to provincial cities later.
www.ngi.org.nz
Government acts to close research gap
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