Investment in connectivity will help rural households - Feds

Photo / File

The announcement of more money for patching up rural connectivity issues will be seen as a positive sign for the future of rural communities, says Federated Farmers.

"The government's extra funding announced this morning was a signal the government is listening when we talk about what we need to keep the economy moving" said Federated Farmers vice president Andrew Hoggard.

Surveys conducted by Federated Farmers showed there were some large parts of the rural countryside which still have slow, or no, access to the internet.

"The vast majority of New Zealanders living in towns and cities have absolutely no idea how bad internet access still is in some parts of the country."

Feds' surveys showed internet speeds for rural users were still likely to make it difficult for them to complete tasks like internet banking, making orders online and using recruitment websites, not to mention the kids being able to do online schooling.

Federated Farmers said it would continue to take every opportunity to encourage the government to speed up the roll-out of the Rural Broadband Initiative.

"We've said for a long time that there is a strong link between rural productivity and internet connectivity. If you are looking for a shovel-ready project, this would be a good one. The shovels are already in the ground" said Hoggard.

"It is good the government is looking for ways to continue to grow rural businesses with better technology, especially given the post-COVID-19 world we will be living in, so hopefully this is just the start of a thoughtful approach to building rural business and community resilience."

Download speeds on-farm, Federated Farmers connectivity survey 2019. Photo / Supplied

More about the Federated Farmers rural connectivity survey:

• Download speeds have tanked with 76 per cent in the 0-20 Mbps range. Within that, around 32 per cent of respondents are enduring 0-5 Mbps and around 50 per cent of respondents in the 0-10 Mbps bracket. Those responses are from those respondents that had internet connections reliable enough to complete the speed test (some indicated in the comments their connections weren't good enough to oblige with download and upload speeds).

• Upload speeds are slightly better with around a third enduring 0-2MBps upload speeds, and 45 per cent in the 0-4 Mbps bracket.

• In terms of the comments, slow speeds and unreliable connections take the top two spots. While most of those particular comments spoke in general terms, there were a significant number of references to how speeds had slowed and internet connections become less reliable since the lockdown kicked in. The third most prominent theme in the comments was that farmers were doing OK with their internet connections, with many of these commenting that this was because they'd recently moved to a wireless broadband provider.

• General business advice is 1.5mbs per employee, so for a farming family with one partner doing the farm cloud computing, the other partner working off farm, and three kids doing school work is roughly 7.5mbs, so the majority of survey respondents under 5mbs are struggling to compete standard tasks. One Netflix stream needs between 3-5mbs, if you are watching on two devices then you need 10mbs.