Govt promises $270m for rural broadband
The Government has pulled a rabbit out of the hat for rural New Zealand ahead of the election, announcing an extra $270 million in funding for rural broadband and for plugging cellphone ‘‘blackspots’’.
Communications Minister Simon Bridges said in a statement that the funding would be on top of $150m that the Government had originally allocated to extend rural broadband and to plug mobile blackspots through the second stage of its rural broadband initiative, called RBI2.
Bridges said an extra $140m would be allocated to RBI2, extending the wireless broadband services it would subsidise to another 74,000 homes and businesses, with $130m going on expanding fibreoptic ultrafast broadband (UFB) to another 60,000 homes and businesses in 190 towns.
Vodafone New Zealand chief executive Russell Stanners said a mobile consortium comprised of Vodafone, Spark and 2degrees had won a $250m contract for RBI2.
Smaller wireless internet companies have picked up work worth $13m.
Bridges said fixed-line company Chorus would carry out the job of extending the UFB network.
The completion of the UFB network would also be brought forward from 2024 to 2022, he said.
The $270m of new investment would largely be paid for by ‘‘recycling’’ cash that had been due to be returned to the Crown following its investment in the first stage of the UFB rollout, with $30m coming from the telecommunications development levy (TDL), he said. The TDL is a levy on phone users.
Stanners said its joint venture with Spark and 2degrees would build a minium of 400 new cellphone towers and would receive $150m upfront from the Crown and $100m later, under a 10-year contract.
The three companies would invest an additional $75m in capital on top of that and foot the operating costs for the new infrastructure, he said.
Chris O’connell – spokesman for the Wireless Internet Service Providers Association, whose members will pick up $13m from RBI2 – said the subsidy would be significant for its members, given they were smaller firms with combined annual revenues of $40m.
‘‘I think you’ll see they will compete very effectively,’’ he said.