TUANZ welcomes Government's new Rural Connectivity Target

6th October 2015

TUANZ welcomes Government's new Rural Connectivity Target

TUANZ has today welcomed the Government's announcement from the Minister of Communications, Hon. Amy Adams of a new target for Rural Connectivity of 50Mbps for 99% of the New Zealanders by 2025. Over many years TUANZ has consistently stated that that the availability of good quality high speed connectivity in all parts of New Zealand is a critical economic enabler for the future of the NZ economy.

“One of the 5 key goals in our recently released strategic direction is to continue to advocate for ubiquitous high quality connectivity across the country and this newly announced Government target is a good step forward towards achieving this goal.” said the CEO of TUANZ, Craig Young.

As part of the submission made by TUANZ in July of this year regarding the RBI2 and Mobile Black Spots programme, TUANZ called for a bold vision where New Zealand should work to meet the aspiration that the rural connectivity experience is the same as the urban connectivity experience. “It’s heartening to see that the Government has heard rural voices in regards to setting an ambitious goal for providing them quality connectivity. We pressed for at least the FCC’s latest pronouncement on broadband as being 25 Mbps download and 10 Mbps upload so this goal of 50 Mbps is a commendable uplift” said Mr Young. “Obviously we would be keen to see this in place as early as possible so we challenge both the Government and providers to work to achieve the target earlier if possible”

TUANZ is committing to continuing to lead in pursuing this ambitious vision as well as providing a watching brief over the actual delivery against the target. “Our only concern is that as technology changes and the demands grow, that we regularly question whether the target is still applicable or whether we should continue to raise it in line with user expectations.”

A copy of our RBI2 and Mobile Black Spots submission can be found on our website here: http://tuanz.org.nz/representation/2015/7/3/tuanz-response-to-the-ufb-and-rbi-extensions

ENDS

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