This is huge news for New Zealand, and I hope they can push it through.
NZ really is hampered by their external infrastructure. I lived in Wellington for 2 years. Offshore speeds were horribly slow, domestic speeds better. Downloading a 1GB demo from Xbox Live Marketplace took a day on the fastest DSL connection I could get (plus burnt through a large chunk of my download cap that month). It takes me less than an hour in California.
The university was charging students per MB, which I hope is a policy that has since been rescinded.
The cruel irony is that New Zealand's brightest new economy is largely on the net; some of their programmers and designers are the best you'll find anywhere.
Things are somewhat better, but far from the speeds we see in the more developed parts of Asia. I'm in Wellington, and get 3.5 M.bits/second downstream, with a 50 GB monthly usage cap.
It's good to note that Wellington is probably the best connected city in New Zealand.
There is fibre around the Wellington CBD, and it extends outwards to some residential. There's also a cable TV offering.
The rest of the country has to put up with ADSL and Wifi links... though things may have improved in my 2 years away from home.
The entrepreneurs behind it are a good team; I've worked with Rod Drury for a couple of years at his startup, so I know this was something they've pitched national government before.
It will be interesting to see what sort of public help they get with the endeavor.
New Zealand has traditionally been a leader in internet uptake - see the BBC's recent data visualisation http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8552410.stm
The initial uptake was all dialup, however, and we've been left behind in the push to broadband because of a local monopoly/duopoly.
I hope this cable goes through - I may consider returning home one day :)
NZ really is hampered by their external infrastructure. I lived in Wellington for 2 years. Offshore speeds were horribly slow, domestic speeds better. Downloading a 1GB demo from Xbox Live Marketplace took a day on the fastest DSL connection I could get (plus burnt through a large chunk of my download cap that month). It takes me less than an hour in California.
The university was charging students per MB, which I hope is a policy that has since been rescinded.
The cruel irony is that New Zealand's brightest new economy is largely on the net; some of their programmers and designers are the best you'll find anywhere.