Broadband talks attract support for council plans

AUCKLAND CITY COUNCIL

MEDIA RELEASE

3 May 2007

Broadband talks attract support for council plans

Auckland City Council is talking to the telecommunications industry and private entrepreneurs about installing a 100km fibre network across the city as the council pushes for greater access to high-speed, affordable broadband for residents and businesses.

For its part, the council has earmarked $2 million in its draft annual plan for capital works facilitating broadband access over two years to help provide the infrastructure to support economic sustainability.

It has been encouraged by the response from the industry to the proposal to achieve affordable broadband for all residents and businesses by 2010.

The council has explored a range of options including a fibre network, micro-technology, street ducting, WiFi network and a council information portal. Business cases are being prepared for all options but it has concluded that the key opportunity lies in establishing a 100km fibre network.

This would give access, within 200m of the route, to 6600 businesses, a further 1675 businesses with potentially high broadband requirements (such as media, advertising, design), plus government departments, hospitals, council facilities, emergency services, schools, universities and all Telecom exchanges.

The planned network would require about $20-25 million overall for a private partner to build. Parties would lease the fibre and offer a range of services.

Councillor Richard Northey, chairperson of the council’s Economic Development and Sustainable Business Committee, says talks with the industry and other players on providing a public-private entity for the urban fibre network have been going well.

“We believe there is sufficient interest and financial backing to move to the next phase,” he said.

“Discussions have been held with central government and an indication has been given of significant support if a sustainable public-private partnership can be formed,” said Mr Northey.

“We now intend to seek ideas from the wider public sector and begin formulating technical, financial and commercial models.”

The work on the WiFi network business case is focused on taking a Request for Information (RFI) document to the market in May/June.

The idea of a council portal as a data clearing house is to be progressed while the council develops it geo spatial information system (GIS) capability.

Ends