Dunedin, NZ: Fibre Plan’s Business Case Questioned

October 13, 2008

in The Blog

country map dunedin Dunedin, NZ: Fibre Plans Business Case QuestionedDunedin municipality is planning a municipal fibre network to leverage on Aurora Energy’s distribution utility network. Aurora Energy Ltd is the council-owned electricity company which has applied for a $3 million share of the Government’s $340 million Broadband Investment Fund to help pay for the network.The city’s plan looks very similar to those of Sweden, Ireland and Greece. It will lay a 39Km metro fibre network and provide fibre connections to municipal buildings, key business, schools, and the city’s University and Hospital.

Although there are no explicit remarks as to if and when the fibre network will reach residential users (most likely using Aurora’s access network to households), a debate is already flaming between the city authorities and major telcos Telecom and TelstraClear. According to the article both providers have seriously invested in metro infrastructure and are aiming to bring broadband speeds up to 24Mbps (that’s ADSL2+ by the way) to 99% of population by 2011, so they essentially don’t understand the necessity of the municipal intentions.

If indeed Telecom and TelstraClear are aiming that high then that is the first case I am aware of municipal plans for fibre network deployment in parallel with similar private investment plans… The questions remain: a) do they have a sound business case? and b) will they qualify for the government funding?

Speaking of public & private sector competition, just so you know Monticello has recently won the legal dispute with regional incumbent TDS over its planned municipal fibre network.

Related posts:

  1. Fibre at the Island of Naxos
  2. OECD Workshop on fibre investment and policy challenges – UPDATE
  3. Free Fiber to the Home: The Novel FTTH Business Model in Ottawa
  4. Japan’s Broadband Plan Beats your Wildest Imagination!
  5. E-business forum – FTTx Workgroup – Open Dialogue @ 29/5/2008

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