The answer is national?

I don’t really like politics, or economics for that matter; neither is much of a science, regardless how many polls or surveys are taken. But I was amused to read that National is might be able to slow the flow of young New Zealanders overseas, through proposing a $1.5 billion initiative to introduce fibre optics into 75% of New Zealand homes.

Personally I find it hard to believe that $1.5 billion is enough, perhaps it will be enough to introduce fibre into 3 or 4 of our major cities?

But I don’t want to be negative about it, it would really be a great initiative for New Zealand. Many other countries have much better internet connectivity than us and we were one of the first to widely accept the internet and other electronic business mediums. We probably just privatised Telecom a little early - is it too late to take the infrastructure back into public ownership - is there the money to continuously upgrade to the next best thing, because we all know fibre won’t handle the bandwidth in another 20 years.

Is fibre environmentally friendly?

Will it slow the flow of young New Zealanders? No, they want to explore - even if our internet is the same speed as China’s or Germany’s, New Zealanders are still going to want to take a look. Or they want to earn money. Pushing the housing market through the roof was probably keeping some entrepreneurs in New Zealand - though it probably evicted a few as well. But New Zealand should look the way of Ireland - they have a rocketing economy, it hasn’t slowed the flow of young Irish to New Zealand (or has it?) - they probably are still complaining about that, but all we hear about is how well the economy there is doing.

Perhaps New Zealand should consider initiatives to increase industry, enhancing our image and cleaning our environment. There are a tonne of opportunities, $1.5 billion of fibre is probably one of them.

Disclaimer: This was written particularly late at night… but it’s a blog.

Last 5 posts by James Little