Work begins on Taradale High ultra-fast broadband internet

Online education access is about to get a massive boost at Taradale High School - thanks to a "mole" and the tireless efforts of the businesses and agencies that got the earth-gnawing tunneller up and running.
By next Tuesday, Taradale High's students and staff will be able to carry out computer operations 250 per cent faster than in the past through a fibre optic cable laid along Murphy Rd last February.
Work on the final stage of the project began Wednesday.
The school is the first in Hawke's Bay to tap into ultra-fast broadband internet access and principal Stephen Hensman was all smiles yesterday when he was allowed a brief stint guiding the compressed air-powered drill called a mole.
As Unison's Wayne Baird said, the mole would drill a 72-metre tunnel about a metre underground and with not a square centimetre of the tarseal driveway or grassed landscape disturbed. The tunnel will carry the fibre link to the school's main server.
While the new link won't be seen, it will be very much experienced.
"It will open so many opportunities," Mr Hensman said.
From fast downloading of video links and You-Tube clips of experiments, through to sourcing large files and quickly linking "to the world".
"It will be invaluable," he said, adding that other schools were watching closely.
Taradale Intermediate and Hastings Boy's High School had already signed up to source the ultra-fast link, although no firm date on installation had yet been set.
Airnet sales manager Ben Deller said the path to installing the link had been a long one in "getting all the organisations together and putting the funding in place".
Airnet worked with Unison, the school and the Ministry of Education.
"It is very satisfying to see this happening," Mr Deller said, adding it was another step in the spread of high-speed technology.
"Fibre is as quick as it gets," Unison's Wayne Baird said. "It's speed of light stuff."
The technology was constantly expanding and the drivers and innovators would be the students who had access to it.
"They will come up with the ideas. This is just the start," Mr Deller said.
Mr Hensman agreed, and said the new link was a foundation for an educational future which would embrace the global linkage of computerisation.
He foresaw a future when students would have their own individual, hand-held computer access facilities - driven by the power of the fibre link.