it.gen.nz

I’ve been saying that for a while, of course. But now the New Zealand Institute is saying so as well. According to the Institute’s latest publication, Defining a broadband aspiration, New Zealand stands to gain $2.7-$4.4 billion dollar per year if decent broadband is implemented across the country. To quote: There is a significant cost to waiting. The longer New Zealand waits, the more economic value it will forego and so New Zealand should apporach the investment in fibre with urgency.

Quite.

Many Pacific states have been missing out on the technology we all take for granted. They have slow, expensive satellite connections that most local people can’t afford. The whole point of the Internet is that everyone joins in, but Pacific peoples have mainly been left out of the loop.

Until now, that is. PICISOC – the Pacific island chapter of the global Internet Society – has announced a project to lay a fibre to many South Pacific states. This isn’t just aspirational – it’s actually funded according to the announcement, so it will probably happen. The fibre is supposed to be laid next year.

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And Telecom’s new service branded jointly with Yahoo certainly seems to have. Telecom has got right up people’s noses with its implementation of Bubble. There’s at least three different problems going on here. (more…)

The Internet has expanded, seemingly from nowhere, to become an essential part of modern living for people in developed countries over the space of only a decade or so. That’s faster than the telephone system was rolled out, faster than electric power, even faster than mobiles. What has driven this extraordinary growth? I give my ideas below, and as always there are some links at the end.

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Back in May I talked about cryptography, which is the science of code making and code breaking. Although we tend to think of codes as a tool of war, they are utterly necessary to e-commerce on the Internet. As always, there are some links at the end.
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Ever wondered how the Internet and telephone calls make their way across the oceans and around the planet? The whole world is girdled in optic fibre. Without it, we wouldn’t have the Internet, and international phone calls would all have that satellite lag.

On the 6th of June 2007, in my regular technology slot on Radio New Zealand National’s Nine to Noon programme, I talked about the history of the cables, how they work and which cables are in use around new Zealand today. Here are the notes of my comments, although I may not have stuck to them on air! At the end of the post are some links for further reading.

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