Porirua Backs Nelson’s Gigatown Bid & Win for Region

After narrowly missing out on a spot in the Gigatown finals, Porirua City has struck up a partnership with Nelson to support its campaign.

Nelson secured 5th place in the finals battle, just ahead of Porirua in 6th place, and joins Wanaka, Timaru, Dunedin and Gisborne in the Chorus run competition to win three year’s cheap access to 1 gigabit, high-speed broadband, as well as a $500,000 community fund and a $200,000 innovation fund.

The finalists must now submit a winning digital strategy for their town and how they will use high speed fibre to support growth in other regions – which is where Porirua comes in.

“Porirua showed they have real tenacity and the will to succeed during the last round, trading us point for point right down to the wire. So we decided to approach them about partnering with us on the strategy if we made it through to the final,” says Nelson’s campaign co-leader Matt Dodd.

The end result is that two people, Mr Dodd from Nelson and Porirua’s Gigatown campaign manager Chris Lipscombe, will now represent Nelson on the trip to Chattanooga organised by Chorus, to learn how the city has benefited from gigabit speed fibre.

Mr Lipscombe says it’s about combining the digital strategic thinking of the two cities to create a gigabit-enabled centre of New Zealand.

“We believe that we need more than one Gigatown to deliver real benefit to New Zealand. If Porirua can’t be in the final, we want to contribute to a digital strategy that will really deliver benefits for central New Zealand.”

“It’s great to have this opportunity to learn what having gigafibre has done for Chattanooga and to work with Nelson to win the Gigatown competition,” says Mr Lipscombe.

Porirua residents are rallying to the call and switching their support by signing up for Nelson. Along with support already offered by Richmond and Blenheim this means that a central New Zealand collaboration is well on its way.

The first round of the Gigatown competition to find New Zealand’s most active town online started last October and ended on September 12. The final stage of the competition ends in November.

Our many Porirua Gigatown supporters will have been invited by Chorus to choose another town to support. Some will choose to support family and friends in other towns. But for those that don’t we would encourage them to put their support behind Nelson.

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