Aardvark Daily

Please visit the sponsor!

Ankle-tapping the UFB

The fibre is in the streets and ultra-fast broadband is lays just metres from the door of the house we're looking at moving into this month (since the one we currently rent is being sold).

"Woohoo" I thought to myself, "now I'll be able to hook up to UFB and my YouTube uploads will take seconds instead of an hour or more as they do with ADSL.

How fortunate I am to live in one of the towns that were first on the UFB roll-out list, or so I thought.

So I went to the Telecom website, typed in the address of the house that sits in the street where some months ago, workers were busy digging and thrusting the great fibre-optic cable in front of every dwelling.

Uh-oh!

"Unavailable at your address... Coming later, no date available" was the response I got from the Telecom UFB address checker.

What the?

I can't get UFB even when the cable runs just metres from my doorstep and there's not even an anticipated availability date available?

Who the hell is running this roll-out?

Yet we're told that the government is wondering why the UFB uptake is so low -- what are *they* smoking? If people can't get access to the fast cable at their doorstep then of course they won't be signing up - because they can't!

If I can't get a UFB connection in one of the very first towns to have fibre rolled out and in a house that positioned in the middle of a street through which the fibre runs then *who* can actually get it?

Is UFB just a giant joke on the public?

And one must also wonder if the UFB is going to be of much value to the nation (even when it *does* become available) if the TICS legislation will see many of our key communications companies pulling out or scaling down their operations -- as Google suggests they will.

What are NZ taxpayers getting for the billions of dollars that is being invested in the UFB roll-out. Right now, it seems the answer is *nothing*.

And what incentive will their be for telcos and ISPs to actually hook up to this system when they know that the costs associated with making their networks available to the GCSB could add a major extra burden to their bottom-line?

Are their *any* Aardvark readers who have UFB available at their place of residence yet?

Please visit the sponsor!

Have your say on this...

PERMALINK to this column

Oh, and don't forget today's sci/tech news headlines

Rank This Aardvark Page

Change Font