1. Summary
This Report provides a high level review of the existing telecommunications infrastructure base in New Zealand that serves the Rural Towns and Small Urban Towns. Information is provided on its capabilities to provide "broadband" access for Internet and data in the near term.
Some 250 towns were identified in total from Statistics New Zealand Census data, comprising 95 Rural Towns (with 100 - 799 people) and 155 Small Urban Towns (with 800 - 9,000 people). However, a number of additional communities with similar attributes are classed as "Rural" and are not as clearly identifiable.
Most of these towns also have Telecom Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) switches in them, connected to their backbone network. Some are also on CLEAR and Telstra Saturn fibre optic cable routes, and all have TV coverage from BCL sites.
It is estimated that 50% (about 125 towns) are already serviced with sufficient basic telecommunications infrastructure in the backbone network to provide broadband access capacity to the switch site, with little specific extra capital investment needed in the network. Existing fibre optic cables or digital microwave radio systems can be equipped to derive extra network capacity. Another 25% of the communities (about 65) are estimated to be within reasonable reach of the backbone network infrastructure, and need some additional network expenditure of the order of $1,000 per Town to derive additional capacity for broadband access.
The remaining 25% of the towns (about 60 Rural Towns) are judged to be beyond the existing backbone network infrastructure capability to readily provide broadband services, and would require specific network capital expenditure of $10,000 or more.
In all towns capital expenditure is required in the local loop to deliver the broadband capacity from the switch out to the "customer" (individual e-centres or other community centres). It is assumed that no equipment or capacity currently exists for this in these towns. The access network expenditure required will be in the range $1,000 up to $5,000 per "customer location" in the smallest Rural Towns. The most likely delivery mechanism is over a Digital Subscriber Line system. At each customer interface a Network Termination Unit is required for the computer, with costs typically up to $700.
The broadband data rate needed is forecast to be from 128 kbps in the smallest Rural Towns, up to 8 Mbps in the largest. The speed demand will grow as users look for higher performance. The capital cost estimates are for a basic scenario, and do not provide for individual business or residential Internet access capacity to be provided. The report was not requested to address the ongoing rental and operating costs in the Rural and Urban Towns, but they will probably be high compared to the cities.
A gap was noted in the Census and switch data on the number of "small communities" and their distribution. Some alternative data on the smallest sizes of schools (up to 3.9 teachers) shows that four to six times as many localities (425 - 650) have small schools, compared to the 95 Rural Towns identified. They are at the most remote points on the periphery of the telecommunications network. Only a few will be located at switch sites or near network nodes. This dramatically increases the number of possible points of broadband service delivery. They will be even more difficult and costly to provide with Internet access. More analysis and data matching is needed to confirm this.
Applicable technologies and the major Service Providers are reviewed and described.
The major telecommunications bearer infrastructure, and the 250 identified towns, has been mapped to give a visual picture. The maps are in the Appendix.
Back to Top