Shouldn't one of the goals for the fibre project be that NZ economy diversifies and grows in other fields as well?
Data communications is basic infrastructure like roads and power lines. They should be built for both current and future benefits, whatever they might be.
Here the country used to live from forest and paper. World class paper and paper technologies companies were created. Today, the companies exist but their focus, investments and factories are elsewhere. Local paper industry is slowly being shut down. When the Centre of Scientific Computing started to look for a new datacenter, they went to the forest. An old paper mill in middle of nowhere, easy cooling (lake) next to it, plenty of power infrastructure, inexpensive location, a plan to build the greenest data centre in the world. Google did something similar as well.
Oldhat: I think Ockel is suggesting that there would have been greater benefit from the rollout of a fibre network to all rural locations rather than primarily urban.
The cost/benefit ratio to rollout fibre into these areas would mean that it is unlikely to occur on a major scale due to it not being commercially viable. I feel that there would have been a greater likelihood of tangible commercial benefit from investing all of the 1.5 billion into a rural rollout.
we're exporting milk and milk products from the rural sector, shipped via trucks, to a a few large dairy companies. not sure where the tangible benefit for fibre comes in there? will the cows produce more milk if we deliver them cow-related tv shows via IPTV?
Excellent idea.
There was that Country Calendar episode that showed cows that were milked while listening to classical music produced more milk and of a higher quality. Perhaps you are right and by also being able to see the orchestra playing their productivity could be increased even more. :-)
The type of data that the agricultural and horticultural sector would benefit from sending/receiving would be things like contents (ie milk solids), yields, localised weather details and a myriad of other data relevant to the industry.
So hardly needing gigabits of connectivity then? I was wondering if they were going to give each cow a facebook page or something that the milking machine updated... Even that wouldnt need massive connections.
I am still wondering how more gigabits means more profit for farmers.
richms: So hardly needing gigabits of connectivity then? I was wondering if they were going to give each cow a facebook page or something that the milking machine updated... Even that wouldnt need massive connections.
I am still wondering how more gigabits means more profit for farmers.
I can't remember the specifics, but I remember someone telling me how farmers were now using satellite imaging and GPS location to more tightly plant corn in more fertile soil.
So yes, it's a big industry and when you give smart people tools they can use them even in what we see as 'simple' industries to make big gains in productivity.
Tyler - Parnell Geek - iPhone 3G - Lenovo X301 - Kaseya - Great Western Steak House, these are some of my favourite things.
richms: So hardly needing gigabits of connectivity then? I was wondering if they were going to give each cow a facebook page or something that the milking machine updated... Even that wouldnt need massive connections.
I am still wondering how more gigabits means more profit for farmers.
My internet connection runs at ~600 kbit/s average but I would prefer 100M or gigabit for the peaks. Just to do things fast when I need to.
For the farmer I could imagine that if they have an urgent animal health care issue, they could e.g. use a networked ultra-scanner to feed live imaging to a vet. That would directly benefit from greater bandwidth. In the long term they could feed health data automatically to a database where it would be analyzed automatically -- to catch health issues before they become a problem.
Agriculture isn't as big here as it's in the NZ but the farmers were the first to get on-line as a whole. Access to databases, registries, keeping track of everything (many things are mandatory for them), webcams, weather forecasts, etc. If RFID is used to give individual cows their personal diet, there's plenty of opportunities there -- although I still try to keep the mental image where cows are freely running around the fields..
I think you will find the reason some people want UFB investment to be focussed on the rural locations is less for mapping of field locations which woudl be done on the farm than the recognition that it is uneconomic at the current time to provide a reasonably priced high(er) speed internet connection to rural and remote rural locations but recognises that these areas generate a significant proportion of NZ foreign income. The lack of connectivity leads to these locations finding it more difficult to get and retain people and without people working in the location there will be no income. It is true in saying that that better internet speeds will provide the ability to share data but removing the "isloation" is as big if not a bigger factor. And yes I am glossing over the obvious tourism dollars with this statement given a lot of these locations already are clustered locations, but equally there are locations like Queen Charlotte sound which could benefit and are strung out remote locations.
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