|
Cost-effectiveness and incentives to improve geographic coverage? The more substantive issue around coverage is whether or not more inexpensive approaches could be undertaken to roll-out the infrastructure to isolated areas where Maori communities reside. For example, what would the cost impacts of providing cable in rural areas through existing telephone and electricity poles be? We also note that other technologies could be used in conjunction with fibre to provide access to broadband in isolated areas.
There may be also be issues of access to resolve around existing sites and lines to enable more cost-effective broadband rollout to be achieved. We recommend then that any costing information available on different approaches to the roll-out be made available for further consideration by the public and interested parties.
As part of this discussion - be it a consideration for the proposed fibre roll-out or other policy decisions to be made about rural broadband - lower cost options do exist. We recommend that the low-cost options utilised by groups such as Inspire be further investigated as part of further work in this area.
Related to the issue of cost-effectiveness is the question of the incentive structures in place for the proposal. Are there sufficient incentives, for example, to ensure adequate proposals are developed for less concentrated population areas? Presently there is no differentiation being made between say the Auckland or Wellington CBD and communities such as Tokoroa or Whakatane, which service outlying areas with high Maori populations.
We recommend that additional work needs to be done to examine the barriers to rolling out the infrastructure to more isolated areas (including smaller urban centres that may be servicing Maori populations) and whether or not the balance of incentives is appropriate to manage this. This might mean for example, giving priority consideration to proposals that will deliver the infrastructure to less populous areas or more isolated areas. We are very wary of providing any form of direct subsidy to support such a move but we do consider specific incentives could be developed to encourage the development of proposals for other regions in the country outside of the main population centres.
|
