Ambient tired of waiting for DSL

By MICHAEL FOREMAN

Graphics software company Ambient Design may be forced to move to new premises as Telecom cannot supply a broadband internet connection to its Waitakere Ranges base.

Technical director Andy Bearsley said he had been trying to persuade Telecom to provide high-speed data access to Ambient's 4ha lifestyle block location for six years.

"We've been rattling the sabre every now and then over that time but they just keep telling us to come back in six months."

Mr Bearsley said Ambient had offered to pay Telecom the estimated $70,000 to $120,000 cost of upgrading the local telephone exchange with digital subscriber line (DSL) equipment.

"The idea is that we would pay Telecom to upgrade the exchange, and then Telecom could lease DSL back from us if any other subscribers also required the service. We already know of one person who is interested."

But an e-mail from Telecom's Business Solutions Centre last week told Ambient that "preliminary checks" had established no data services were available at the Waitakere exchange.

Mr Bearsley said he knew that but he wanted to know what it would take to get them.

Ambient needed a high-speed internet connection to service its clients, which are all in the United States. The five-employee company is clocking up around $1 million in export earnings from contracts with software giants such as Adobe and Corel.

"These clients are sending us large Photoshop documents of one to two megabytes all the time, and it only takes a couple of these to draw off our bandwidth."

At present Ambient is passing around two gigabytes a month through an ihug satellite-based connection. While this delivers acceptable broadband performance downstream, upstream traffic is carried over a dial-up connection and the service is susceptible to weather conditions.

"When the weather goes bad we get rain fade. This happens quite a lot in winter where we are. Also, because of the positioning of the satellite dish, we lose our connection for about half an hour on some days in spring and autumn when the sun reaches a certain azimuth. We definitely need a land-based solution."

Mr Bearsley said he had started looking at alternative premises in Albany but was not sure if DSL would be available there either. Moving to the CBD would not be an acceptable option.

"The intensity of programming means you have to have somewhere that is inspiring yet soothing. We couldn't do this kind of work in town."

Telecom did not respond to several calls for comment.