Connecting all those hard-to-reach places

It has been nine years since the Government pledged to bring better connectivity to rural areas and it’s spending more than half a billion dollars to get there.

While many country folk are reaping the benefits of better digital infrastructure, some still feel they are stuck in the digital hinterland.

The Gladstone area of Carterton district is one of its busiest rural districts, yet business and community groups there are still plagued by terrible cellphone reception. Users at the pub, recreation centre, rugby club and school are frustrated by this poor connection, even though they are in relatively open terrain not far from main towns.

The owner of the popular Gladstone Inn, Ray Wolff, said poor connectivity was costing his business money and was frustrating customers. Though their provider installed a booster, their mobile broadband was still slow.

‘‘Our eftpos goes down, which is a nightmare [on] the weekends and [at] busy times, it gets overloaded and crashes.’’

The Government recently pledged a further $40 million to the Rural Broadband Initiative (RBI) from the Provincial Growth Fund to help tackle mobile reception black spots and connect more areas to broadband.

This was in addition to the $105m earmarked for the second phase of RBI, which aimed to get fast broadband to the greatest number of under-served rural homes and businesses. Once all deployment was complete, the total spend on RBI will be $630m.

The uptake of some services has been relatively poor. As of September 2018, about 31,000 customers had joined Vodafone’s RBI1 fixed wireless broadband service – a small proportion of the more-than-300,000 rural households and businesses able to benefit from upgrades under the first phase.

Many farmers had opted for independent Wireless Internet Service Providers (WISP) because of their ability to get to less accessible areas.

Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment ICT policy and programmes manager Janelle Whittleston said it understood that providing telecommunications infrastructure to the most remote parts of the country came with challenges.

‘‘MBIE recognises the importance of being digitally connected, both for urban and rural areas – for the social, educational, economic and physical benefits it can bring.’’

‘‘Our eftpos goes down, which is a nightmare [on ] the weekends and [at] busy times, it gets overloaded and crashes because of our connectivity.’’ Ray Wolff, Gladstone Inn owner