Woohoo!!!

Stuff.co.nz reports:

Vodafone has joined the ranks of the large cap broadband providers after it revealed a 200GB "Chocka Naked" broadband plan, without fanfare, early this week.

Larger data caps are always great news but the best news is the price:

The Chocka Naked plan costs $105 per month ($75 for those with a Vodafone on-account mobile plan) for 200GB. If users also take up the $40 per month 'double-data', they can get up to 400GB per month, which would cost $145 per month ($115 for Vodafone on-account customers).

While still expensive in international terms it is a major step forward for NZ. And with the Vodafone acquisition of TelstraClear being approved I should be able to upgrade, soon I hope.

A New Cold War?

Co-founder of Pacific Fibre Rod Drury has revealed the super power politics also played a part in the failure of the Pacific Fibre international cable.

As reported by the Herald:

Drury said yesterday that during negotiations the company discovered a "whole lot of political stuff", including tensions between the United States and China over investment.

Asked if the United States had security concerns over potential Chinese involvement in Pacific Fibre, Drury replied: "What I will say is you start connecting cables and those are the sort of national concerns that all governments would have.

A good opportunity for a Public-Private Partnership?

The Government is spending $1.5 billion dollars on setting up ultra-fast broadband around the country. Unfortunately while it is a great idea the benefits are set to be limited for a couple of reasons.

First, data caps in New Zealand are so absurdly low that you will be able to use up all your available data in a few days and be paying enormous excesses for the rest of the month.

And second, the price of broadband in this country is incredibly expensive. At my flat we currently pay $75 a month for 60GB of data from TelstraClear. Contrast this to the UK where I was paying £13 a month for unlimited data with O2 (This included a £5 discount for having my mobile with O2).

New Zealand is miles away from where the vast majority of the content is produced (the US and the UK) and our population is relatively small, so we may never see the sort of deals offered in the UK. But the major problem is the Southern Cross Cable which limits capacity as it is used for all international communications out of New Zealand (data and phone) and as the only international cable has a monopoly.

What New Zealand needs is a second international cable to increase capacity and competition, and in turn bring down prices. But as the DomPost reports:

Pacific Fibre, backed by big-name entrepreneurs including Sam Morgan, Stephen Tindall and Rod Drury, launched in March 2010 aiming to build a 13,000km high-speed fibre-optic cable connecting New Zealand and Australia to California.

But this afternoon, chairman Sam Morgan said Pacific Fibre had failed to raise the required US$400 million ($490 million).

This is bad news for consumers and innovative businesses in New Zealand. Which leads me to ask?

Isn't this a great opportunity for a public-private partnership? Something the Government could use to sell the idea to New Zealanders?

(P.S. I see now the broadband plan I had in the UK is £12.50 a month, whether you have an O2 mobile or not.)