$47m in Covid relief funds to boost wobbly rural broadband

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People in towns and cities have had a big boost from UFB during the pandemic - with the faster internet connections helping more people to work from home.

But that hasn't been the case in rural areas - which was acknowledged by Communications Minister David Clark this afternoon as he announced $47 million to boost rural broadband.

"The Covid-19 pandemic has shown us reliable internet is critical to being able to work, learn and socialise from our homes. Having been through lockdowns, it's clear some rural networks had real trouble adapting to the extra usage," Clark said.

The $47m "Rural Capacity Upgrade" will see existing cell towers upgraded and new towers built in rural areas experiencing poor performance, as well as fibre, additional VDSL coverage and other wireless technology deployed in congested areas," Clark said.

"By the end of 2024 around 47,000 rural households and businesses should experience faster internet speeds and better reception than they do right now.

"For those businesses, farms, marae, and households that aren't captured by current rural broadband initiatives, such as the Ultra-Fast Broadband programme, the initiative launched today will be of great benefit," Clark said. He name-checked areas including remote health and online learning.

The money will be spread across 12 private sector providers, from Spark and Vodafone to various provincial "wisps" (wireless internet service providers) - see table below. More contracts are on the way.

The 12 contractors so far for the $47m Rural Capacity Upgrade.

While money for the existing, $300m-plus Rural Broadband Initiative (RBI) has come from a $50m annual levy on the telecommunications industry (recently scaled back to $10m per year), the new capital comes from Covid relief funds.

Even before the pandemic, the public-private rural broadband rollout was a sore point with advocacy groups including the Technology Users Association of NZ (Tuanz), which saw it as less comprehensive than the urban UFB. Tuanz head Craig Young has complained the rural broadband rollout has not only covered too few areas, but offered relatively slow speeds compared with the UFB in what he labels a stale donut of broadband coverage".

Recently, a number of Kiwis on the outskirts of cities - who are too far from town for UFB fibre but not rural enough for the RBI - have been turning to a new option: Elon Musk's Starlink - which has received mixed reviews form early Kiwi adopters.