Getting broadband into rural areas could help arrest the urban population drift, findings from a recent survey conducted by Professor Geoff Kearsley from Otago University’s Department of Media, Film and Communication, show.
The survey was carried out in the Maniototo and North Otago and showed that the Internet was essential for a number of businesses and provided some level of business support and employment opportunities for most respondents.
Small businesses associated with the Central Otago Rail Trail and other tourism ventures were particularly dependent on the Internet and most farmers made significant use of it as well.
The study also notes that longer term residents in the Maniototo and North Otago had seen the loss of downgrading of local services such as banks and post offices.
“However, significant numbers said that many of these services had been replaced by online facilities and, for many, the service was as good or better,” says Professor Kearsley.
That tallies with our experience. We use the internet for most of our banking and a good deal of billing and payments, research and communication. It’s now a vital part of running our business.
Nearly everyone said that they wanted to be able to continue to live in the district and, although only ten percent said that the Internet was an essential part of making that possible, around two thirds saw Internet access as contributing to their ability to stay.
“It is clear that even with slow and unreliable access, the Internet is playing an important part in rural people’s lives,” says Professor Kearsley.
“The Internet has enhanced their social lives, created and enhanced business opportunities, replaced lost services and is helping rural people to stay where they would most like to live. One or two people have even been able to go and live in the country because of broadband facilities.
“When ultra-fast broadband becomes available to all rural households, then these benefits are likely to be greatly enhanced.”
We’ve got broadband which works at a similar speed as mobile using a T-stick. It’s considerably better than dial-up but a long way from ultra-fast. Improved speed and connectivity would make a big difference.
Homepaddock 
In terms of productivity at least fast broadband may not make as much difference as you think. If fact it may not may any difference at all. I argue this in more detail here.
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Paul,
Intuitively I think you are correct.
The bigger lifts in productivity come from accessing a new technology, ie, from no internet to at least dial up and you note a lift from dial up to slow broadband.. which indicates you can access and process larger packets of information in a timely manner.. which indicates there is indeed an issue of speed.
However, with generally slow broadband you can’t yet take the next step of accessing and processing packages *built* for fast broadband. It may be that bigger and more complex packages will follow the advent of faster and more widely available broadband.
JC
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I won’t pretend to be techno savvy but I remember the advent of the cell phone and how farmers became easier to deal with through being contactable while out on the land. If fast broad-band is an innovation I suspect it will assist in commercial transactions. Bring it on.
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Why are we wasting money on broadband, when a whole new wireless build-out is coming. I understand that the present wireless technology is great in rural areas as it doesn’t get the same interference as it can in urban areas.
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Paul the difference between a horse and a car was greater than between an early model care and a later one but a later was still better.
The difference between fast broadband and what we’ve got might not be as big as the difference between what we’ve got and dial-up but it will be faster.
Little improvements in time savings will add up for those like us who use the internet a lot.
Sally – we get a wireless signal to a pole in the garden which is wired to the office. It’s better than dial-up but not nearly as good as broadband we get in Wanaka.
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Sally,
Prepare to be disappointed!
The RBI wireless is old (current) 3G technology and it is going to offer the speeds that were the urban minimums set in 2006.
The spectrum for fast 4G wireless hasn’t yet been released (it needs the analogue TV switch off)
No operator has committed to building a rural 4G network (Vodafone is being subsidised to build 3G)
Sadly the opportunity to create farmer built and owned fibre optics (proposed by Federated Farmers) was dismissed yet could have been built for a fraction of the spend with Telecom & Vodafone.
Ultra Fast Broadband is being delivered to urban NZ and when complete the differential between urban and rural broadband will be 20x (greater than it currently is)
I have seen farms with fibre connections enjoying 100Mb/s, but they are very rare, there are farmers doing great things with broadband today but it could be so much more.
I was involved in co-ordinating the roll out of the earlier Project PROBE rollout in Nelson Marlborough and sadly I feel the RBI will deliver disappointing outcomes because it was not ambitious enough for rural NZ.
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Yes Chris, there are farmers doing great things with broadband and wireless already but so far I have found Telecom and politicans are not up with the play.
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We tired of the dial-up tying up a phone line and being slow. We paid to have hi speed 100mbps satellite installed. It’s slow, expensive and an eyesore on the roof. It doesn’t come on line when the weather is fog, rain or snow. I was angry when speed tests indicated less than 100kbs download speed, less than 1/100th commercial boast. Another ripoff.
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“The difference between fast broadband and what we’ve got might not be as big as the difference between what we’ve got and dial-up but it will be faster.”
Grimes, Ren and Stevens (GRS) suggests that the marginal productivity increase from going from slow to fast broadband is zero. So at best productivity as a function of download speed is non-decreasing, concave and very flat when fast broadband kicks in. This doesn’t make for a great case for huge investment in fast broadband. There are reasons to think the GRS study could under estimate the marginal benefits of fast broadband but they would have to under estimate a lot for fast broadband to be a good deal.
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Paul – doesn’t time not wasted waiting for downloads help productivity, and even if it doesn’t, do lower frustration levels count?
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Paul,
The Motu report has added little to this debate, I agree with Ele that time saved is productivity, I spoke to Arthur Grimes and it was clear they were working from a very academic standpoint, the problem is that it is not broadband alone that you need to measure but also the applications it enables.
They are also talking about the step rural NZ is about to take from dial up speeds to very basic broadband UFB is not coming to rural NZ!
One real example I have seen is an apple exporting business (earning NZ over $60M/yr) they need fibre to be able to run high definition video conferencing to cut one of their directors spending 20% of his time overseas! – they are fortunate in having accessible fibre passing their gate!)
I know from talking to farmers (& their IT savvy wives!) that broadband will be huge in several areas, one is access to web based services like on-line banking and accounting packages like Xero, another is Trade Me, on-line study is huge and many rural families are pulled together by Skype.
The Telco’s are urban focused because thats where the populations and revenues are, the technologies they buy are urban and so are most of the decision makers.
Farmers do get technology when it is useful, but until now the internet has simply been slow and unreliable.
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“working from a very academic standpoint”
Say what???!!! There is some other standard for research?
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“The Motu report has added little to this debate,”
Actually the Motu report had added a lot to the debate on productivity and the internet, something which many people talk about but about which there is little evidence. The results provide the first firm-level estimates internationally of the degree of productivity gains sourced from upgraded internet access.
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