Tag Archive for ‘New Zealand’ at LIRNEasia

Tag Archive for 'New Zealand'

Call for Papers: Infrastructure Regulation: What works, Why, and How do we know?
Deadline: 05 December 2008.

Ultra-fast broadband plan ‘waste of money’ - New Zealand govt.

on April 23, 2008

While Telecommunications Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka awaits public comments on its ‘National Backbone Network’ proposed to be installed mostly as a fully government owned infrastructure to provide islandwide broadband links, New Zealand Government says it would be a huge waste of taxpayer money to put $1.5 billion into ultra-fast broadband access.

New Zealand’s National Party leader John Key announced the ambitious plan to put broadband into every home and business through fibre cables over the next six years if his party wins the next election. Mr Key said that with the fibre network he wanted, people would be able to use the internet at lightning speed - essential if the country was to increase productivity and remain internationally competitive.

But Communications Minister David Cunliffe saw nothing but…

Comment
Tags: Broadband, broadband access, David Cunliffe, fibre network, John Key, New Zealand, New Zealand government, New Zealand\'s National Party, Sri Lanka, USD, While Telecommunications Regulatory Commission of Sri L.

Telecom Cook Islands Completes Commercial Deployment Of GSM Softswitch

Chanuka Wattegama

on January 15, 2008

Telecom Cook Islands Ltd, the sole provider of telecommunications in the Cook Islands, has completed commercial deployment of ADC’s UltraWave GSM softswitch. Telecom Cook Islands, which has been in operation since July 1991, is a private company owned by Telecom New Zealand Ltd. (60%) and the Cook Islands Government (40%).

The new softswitch - which upgrades Telecom Cook’s core wireless network to more efficient, IP-based technology in order to reduce costs and enable value-added services such as integrated SMS, voicemail, GPRS and pre-paid calling, has been in deployment since September 2007, and the final network cutover was accomplished last week. The UltraWave solution includes an overall expansion of the network’s capacity to 15,000 from 8,000 GSM subscribers.

Read the full story here.

(Background info: This group of islands…

Comment
Tags: ADC, Britain, Central Intelligence Agency, Cook Islands, Cook Islands Government, GPRS, GSM, Hawaii, integrated SMS, IP-based technology, New Zealand, Of GSM Softswitch Telecom Cook Islands Ltd, pre-paid calling, SMS, South Pacific Ocean, Telecom Cook, Telecom Cook Islands, Telecom New Zealand Ltd., telecommunications, voicemail, Wireless Network.

Poor broadband performance causes New Zealand government to break up dominant teleco

Rohan Samarajiva

on September 27, 2007

The break up of AT&T in 1984 led to a seismic shift in telecom policy and regulatory thinking worldwide and also created the conditions for the Internet boom. New Zealand is a small country quite unlike the US, but it has taken an unprecedented step that has the potential of changing policy and regulatory thinking again. As the excerpt below says, the split is on the lines of the BT reorganization in the UK. That is true. But the key difference is that BT reorganized voluntarily and NZ Telecom, not.

If I were managing an incumbent telco, claiming dominance in various markets and providing poor broadband service, the NZ decision will give me nightmares; but more than that, it will cause me to seriously consider BT…

1 Comment
Tags: AT&T, British Telecom, Broadband, broadband Internet, BT Group, David Cunliffe, faster and cheaper Internet services, Internet boom, Internet Service Providers, Internet speed, New Zealand, New Zealand government, NZ Telecom, Paul Reynolds, retail, retail arm, United Kingdom, United States.

Pacific states hold tsunami test

Chanuka Wattegama

on May 17, 2006

BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4988492.stm

More than 30 countries around the Pacific Ocean have tested a system to warn them of approaching tsunamis.
The exercise began with a mock alert at the Tsunami Warning Centre in Hawaii.
An earthquake with a magnitude 9.2 was imagined to have struck near the coast of Chile, sending a tsunami racing across the eastern Pacific.
A second mock earthquake alert, north of the Philippines, will provide a further test on Wednesday.
Governments will report back on how efficiently they received the tsunami warnings, relayed through various circuits including weather services, emails and faxes.
The drill, co-ordinated by the Hawaii warning centre, will also measure how well the message is relayed through local emergency systems.

‘Already a success’
At the start of the test, a beeping noise sounded throughout the warning…

Comment
Tags: American Samoa, Asia-Pacific, BBC, Charles McCreery, Chile, emergency systems, Ewa Beach, Hawaii, Indian Ocean, Indonesia, local emergency systems, Malaysia, New Zealand, Pacific Ocean, Thailand, the Philippines, tsunami, Tsunami Warning Centre, weather services.

LIRNEasia