Aardvark Daily

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NZ's own Chinese supercity

I'm afraid I'm left scratching my head this morning (splinter alert!).

The government has announced that it's prepared to contribute up to $13m towards a new international data cable that would run in competition to the existing Southern Cross cable that is presently this country's primary connection to the rest of the world.

Just $13m?

Excuse me?

Having just spent a king's ransom on the rolling out of UFB across the nation, the government decides to penny-pinch over a commitment to actually deliver the international connectivity and competition that will be required to make any sensible use of that UFB?

This is the same government that was happy to throw $30m of taxpayers' money at Rio Tinto so as to preserve a few jobs in the South Island.

This is the same government that was happy to throw $30m at our America's Cup team so that some rich folk could race boats in San Francisco harbour and possibly deliver a few benefits to the boat-building industry.

This is the same government that was happy to throw obscene sums at the Hollywood movie industry so they'd come here and make a few pictures whilst also dismantling our labour laws.

This is the same government that tells us the UFB is essential to ensuring that we are a competitive nation in the second decade of the 21st century.

What the hell is going on here?

To be honest, this whole UFB thing seems to be a cunning ploy to boost the fortunes of a few exclusive companies and their shareholders.

The Chorus-tax clearly benefits nobody but that company.

Not delivering the much-needed extra bandwidth and competition to the international cable marketplace benefits nobody but the existing owners of the SCC and their shareholders.

It is looking very much as if we'll end up with this massive multi-lane ultra-fast information superhighway that links to the rest of the world by a single-lane toll road which is controlled by a single entity (the SCC consortium) that is free to charge whatever the hell it wants and allows only one car at a time to pass through.

Who hasn't seen the pictures of all those empty super-cities that have been built in China?

Well, unless we get some serious competition in the area of international connectivity, that is exactly what our UFB will look like. Wide open spaces with super-fast express-ways but no way to get traffic in or out.

Highly restrictive data-caps and limited accessible international bandwidth will starve our UFB and make it little more than a joke.

What are they smoking in parliament?

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