Out of dial-up ‘dark ages’
A Marlborough community has taken wireless internet into their own hands after waiting years for the Rural Broadband Initiative to reach them.
The Onamalutu Valley, 30 minutes from Blenheim, was living in ‘‘the Dark Ages’’, according to one resident, with dial-up internet and patchy mobile phone connection.
Resident Peter Steggle said the community of 70 or 80 had been promised broadband within 18 months when he and his wife moved to the area more than a decade ago.
‘‘A year later I asked how the waiting list was and they said maybe three years and they just kept doing that,’’ Steggle said.
‘‘Eventually they just said they weren’t doing it because there wasn’t enough people.’’
After a failed petition to Communications Minister Amy Adams, Steggle bumped into Roger de Salis in 2015 who proposed they take on the task themselves.
De Salis is the founder of internet provider Power Wireless Ltd, which specialises in farflung areas untouched by the large telco companies.
Installed in 2016, the point-topoint system in Onamalutu was his first job, but he has since installed a similar system in the Wakamarina Valley.
He describes the network as a series of radios.
‘‘You configure them correctly with internet addresses and frequencies and you end up with a pair of radios that looks like a wire. You take another pair of radios and join A to B . . .
Peter Steggle had lived in the Onamalutu Valley for many years waiting for internet connection.
Peter Steggle
ultimately you get to a place where you can get a lot of internet capacity.’’
Steggle’s job of convincing the locals was an easier one.
‘‘Most people, when you said ‘do you want internet’, they said ‘where do we sign?’ It was as easy as that.’’
The point-to-point
wireless
system uses a house high on the hillside that has a direct line of sight straight into the middle of Blenheim – to a dish on top of the Porse House building. The dish beams straight into the signal that runs north to south down the South Island, Steggle said, providing fast internet.
‘‘The signal bounces to us and then another point up the valley, and from there we’ve got about 40-odd customers.
‘‘If you take any one of those points out, the site will collapse.’’
Allan and Jane White further down the valley had been struggling with dial-up for 18 years before de Salis installed internet.
‘‘We use it for everything now, as everybody does,’’ White said.
The Whites said there were three or four houses in the valley
that were not able to connect to the system.
‘‘We were a bit marginal because there’s a couple of trees, but he’s got it through,’’ White said.
Janet Steggle said the valley was still not part of the Rural Broadband Initiative, and not considered a priority without a school or large population.
Chorus stakeholder communications manager Nathan Beaumont said Onamalutu had only 46 customers and was not close enough to the path of an existing fibre network.
He said the existing network would have to be extended by 13 kilometres in order to upgrade the valley’s internet access.
‘‘Due to this cost, Chorus has no current plans to upgrade the network in Onamalutu.’’
‘‘Most people, when you said ‘do you want internet’, they said ‘where do we sign?’ It was as easy as that.’’