Okura is a village at the northern fringe of Auckland. It is close to Long Bay (the most northerly of the East Coast Bays) – being less than 2 km from Long Bay College (as the gull flies).

 

Down by the estuary, the village has some 150 houses on town sections; with newer lifestyle blocks up the valley. Most village houses date from the 70’s or before – and the copper is from this era.

The data connections are laughable – some use Vodafone wireless, some use ADSL, and the results are uniformly terrible – patchy and extremely slow and there’s a waiting list for new connections.

Locals (especially those with business needs) have been seeking improvement for years. About 8 months ago, Vodafone made a pitch for an improved wireless experience – but many who tried it have reverted to landline (terrible as that is).

The mantra from the providers is ‘wait for the Upgrade in 2015’.

Well – according to Chorus’ website, the RBI salvation arriving July 2015-June 2016 will be in the form of 5Mbps – which means copper ADSL. For this to be any better than currently delivered, they must be going to run a new copper line down from the main East Coast Bays Road – or perhaps cross-country from the big new subdivisions at Long Bay – roughly equidistant at about 3 km.

I would expect that most of the cost of running such a new feed would be in the civil works – not the per-metre cost of the cable. If so, running fibre instead of copper to a village cabinet would ensure the village a much happier (data-wise) next 20 years. Note that a central cabinet is less than 410m to every house in Okura village.

Can anyone suggest a way for us to promote this ?
Or, pick holes in my analysis ?
Might the new government’s policy to increase spend on UFB offer us a toehold ?