Local projects submitted for fast broadband

September 4th, 2015
[by David Armstrong]

The submission to government by Tasman District Council for fast broadband for Motueka has been drafted in time for its September 18th deadline.

Under the guidance of Karen Lee, contracted by Nelson Economic Development Agency (EDA) to prepare the submission, a Tasman Digital Strategy has been formulated, including several projects specific to the provision of ultrafast broadband (UFB) for Motueka. (See our earlier story.)

The final draft will be agreed next Wednesday, ready to formally submit to the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment.

Following the government's guidelines, the strategy and list of projects has been created for the Tasman District and for Motueka, showing what projects the district and town would run if UFB was widely available.

The goal was to convince government that our district and our town would make good use of money that would enable broadband expansion, and particularly better use than other competing towns in New Zealand.

Details for the submission have been built up after meetings in Motueka, Mapua, Wakefield, Golden Bay and Brightwater and assembled by small steering groups in each town.

For Motueka, the steering group decided the main project that would be enabled by the availability of UFB and would be most beneficial to the town would be the development of a co-working business space as the start of a "business innovation hub".

Initially this co-working space would be one or more shared office spaces that would hold a variety of core business infrastructure including desks, high speed internet, computers and printers, video conferencing facilities, meeting rooms, seminar/workshop facilities and presentation spaces.

Along with this business-oriented project, one community-oriented initiative will be an ongoing programme run by a collaboration of Seniornet, Motueka library and Te Awhina Marae, teaching better use of computers and the Internet especially for people who struggle with the technology.

The submission to government for a local rollout of UFB is at its second stage, following a registration of interest in July. Although government has not yet decided which towns will receive UFB infrastructure, it is known that the first hurdle has been cleared and that government has asked for further details from Tasman along with some other districts.

It is also important to note that both TDC and Nelson EDA have expressed their support for ongoing work on digital improvement in the region, regardless of the outcome of our submission to government for immediate funding.

All ideas which have gone into the current submission will become part of an eventual Regional Digital Action Plan.

This round of approximately $300 million of government funding will be purely for the laying of cables and not for running any projects that use the cables.

The regional projects that have been put into this submission by TDC include:

a Smart Week roadshow,
a digital website portal for regional information,
graduate and postgraduate courses at NMIT for digital innovation,
a partnership between the district's libraries,
a digital transition toolkit for small to medium enterprises (including mentoring, training courses and workshops on how to create a digital plan),
tourism and digital marketing (initially related to the Great Taste cycle trail).

The local projects related to the use of UFB by Motueka include:

a co-working space,
business development training, such as Co.Starters,
developing an online promotion strategy to encourage people to move here from large cities, especially Auckland,
an eventual full-scale business innovation hub,
an extension of the Computers at Home scheme in schools,
modernising Motueka Online for mobile platforms and more interactivity,
digital mapping of the area to show heritage locations and points of interest, aimed mainly at tech-using visitors including cycle trail riders.

This co-working space would be available for a range of users, including local business people; residents requiring short-term use of high-tech equipment but who have poor Internet in their homes; national and international businesses wanting a satellite office; people offering business courses or seminars; and temporary residents to hire for short-term use, such as people on holiday for the summer wanting to access and work remotely for their overseas employer.

Initially it could be located in a part (or all of) one of the vacant commercial buildings in the CBD, or in some space that is unused for a while. The location could change easily if other spaces became available temporarily.

One aim would be to make it financially self-sustainable, so it could be based around a café that can provide catering for and hosting meetings and seminars and perhaps also training opportunities in the hospitality industry.

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