Championing better broadband for New Zealand 2019 / ISSUE 9 Unlocking broadband's potential Communications Minister Kris Faafoi wants every New Zealander to benefit from faster internet connections ESPORTS FREEVIEW INSPIRE NET BROUGHT TO YOU BY Online gaming goes Broadcast television 20 years from professional moves online dial-up to fibre Contents 2019 / ISSUE 9 REGULARS 1 Editorial The Network is the Computer 2 In Brief Security fears, installs peak, UFB wireless link 9 10Gbps Fibre Chorus is testing the world's fastest residential broadband 10 TV MOVES ONLINE Freeview launches a streaming service that could see an COVER STORY end to satellite A new Telecommunications Act and issues concerning 5G will keep the dishes and aerials 6Communications Minister busy. He also wants to close the digital divide 20 Re:Mobile 28 Recycling used mobile phones 22 ESPORTS Fibre Unbundling Professional What is it? Why might it matter? gaming has 24 become a Inspire Net spectator sport Twenty years of pushing at 12 technology's edge RURAL CONNECTIVITY GROUP An innovative approach to filling the gaps in rural broadband and phone coverage 16 Rugby World Cup 33 The pressure is on RANT 18 Bill Bennett is still MyRepublic waiting for the virtual Asia-Pacific's regional service provider reality revolution thedownload.co.nz The Download | Editorial 1 Editor Bill Bennett Chorus Editorial Consultants Ian Bonnar, Steve Pettigrew, Holly Cushen Contributors Scott Bartley, Heather Wright, The Network is Hadyn Green, Johanna Egar, Holly Cushen, Sarah Putt Senior Account Director LauraGrace McFarland the Computer Designers Jessie Marsh, Julian Pettitt Account Executive Paige Fleming On the cover IF THE HEADLINE is familiar, it could be because they were slow. Often you would use a dial-up Photograph by Nicola Edmonds you’ve been around networks and computers connection with a pre-digital acoustic modem. for a long time. The term pre-dates Ultra-Fast If you were lucky and had a reasonable budget Broadband. It even pre-dates the Internet. you might have been able to afford an ISDN The words are almost forgotten. Yet they (Integrated Services Digital Network) line. This Published by ICG are more relevant and more potent today than was usually a digital copper link that could run at PO Box 77027, Mt Albert Auckland 1350, New Zealand ever before. 64 or 128 kilobits per second. www.icg.co.nz They date back to 1984 and a company called To put ISDN in perspective, Chorus is testing ISSN 2624-1137 (Print) Sun Microsystems. At the time, Sun sold a range 10Gbps. It’s a technology that residential ISSN 2624-1145 (Online) of expensive, powerful graphics workstations. customers may soon use to move data at around They were more powerful than that era’s 100,000 times the data speed of ISDN. personal computers. Yet that was never enough Although the networks were slow, client-server The Download is championed by for the engineers computing was a huge Chorus PO Box 632, Wellington 6140 and scientists breakthrough. It paved www.chorus.co.nz who used them the way for everything The contents of The Download to process huge 'To put ISDN in perspective, connected computers are protected by copyright. Please data volumes. and phones do now. feel free to use the information In those days, Chorus is testing 10Gbps. It's a Along the way, we in this issue of The Download, with attribution to The Download there were small technology that residential stopped talking about by Chorus New Zealand Limited. computers – PCs mainframes and Opinions expressed in The Download customers may soon use are not necessarily those of the and graphic minicomputers. We publisher or the editor. Information workstations – and to move data at around call today’s bigger contained in The Download is big computers, the computers ‘servers’. correct at the time of printing and 100,000 times the speed' while all due care and diligence mainframes and We also have server has been taken in the preparation minicomputers. farms and cloud of this magazine, the publisher is not responsible for any mistakes, Small computers could, in theory, communicate computing. In essence, cloud computing is the omissions, typographical errors or with big computers. It didn’t happen often. client-server’s great-grandchild. changes to product and service Instead, the two types of machines lived most of Today, the network is very much the computer. descriptions over time. their working lives in different worlds. Want to know something? Use Google or Then something emerged called client-server Wikipedia’s networked computers. Want to computing. I’m simplifying here. The idea was process numbers? Buy cloud computer time from that small computers could hand off heavy-duty Amazon or a local cloud vendor. Want to run data processing to larger computers. At the same accounts? Use Xero’s networked computers. time, big computers could hand off the graphics Sun Microsystems understood that in 1984. processing needed to display the fruits of their The company never made it to the promised land. labour to smaller computers. It was wiped out when rivals learned to make Connect with us Facebook.com/ChorusNZ Most of the time, client-server networks were servers from cheap, commoditised hardware. It Twitter/ChorusNZ local. They might cover a single building, a got that strategy wrong, but it saw the potential of Chorus NZ Limited on LinkedIn factory site or a campus. networking long before anyone else. When there were wide-area networks, they www.thedownload.co.nz were exotic and expensive. By today’s standards Bill Bennett 2019 / Issue 9 2 In brief Security fears widespread, safeguards scare Research commissioned by InternetNZ the negatives. When asked to name those found 94 percent of New Zealanders benefits, 83 percent named having access are concerned about the security of to information. their personal data. The number comes Andrew Cushen, InternetNZ's outreach from the organisation's annual survey of and engagement director says: "As more internet attitudes. and more of our lives are spent on the Although New Zealanders worry about Internet, being able to access information data security, most don't do anything online has now become a necessity. about it. Researchers found few users "This is why it’s so important that we take practical steps to protect themselves continue to try and close digital divides from risk. in New Zealand. Every New Zealander Only one-third of New Zealanders deserves the opportunity to harness the surveyed used account authentication, power of the Internet". either two-factor or multi-factor. Cushen says people not protecting Meanwhile less than half make themselves online is something we need Andrew Cushen regular backups. to improve if New Zealanders are to stay INTERNETNZ'S OUTREACH AND There is concern about children safe online. ENGAGEMENT DIRECTOR being able to see inappropriate content He says: "We all need to take personal online. The survey found this worries 92 responsibility for our safety on the internet". content and what to do if they come across percent of those questioned. There are The concern over inappropriate content anything upsetting. Cushen says: "We need positives. Nine out of ten respondents told is a reminder that families should talk to to ensure that people of all ages feel safe InternetNZ internet benefits outweigh each other about the different types of on the Internet." CHORUS, NOKIA WIN GLOBAL AWARD FOR RBI WORK Chorus and Nokia won the Best Broadband Delivering Social Impact award at the Broadband World Forum in Germany. The award is for the two companies’ work on the Rural Broadband Initiative. This included upgrading 1200 rural cabinets. The pair also delivered fibre to 1000 rural schools and upgraded internet speeds for 110,000 households. Chorus CEO Kate McKenzie says: “Chorus’ key target of connecting all rural schools was particularly satisfying, as this has resulted in a major long-term benefit to the nation. We are particularly pleased to observe the strong take up of fibre by schools across the country." One of the side benefits of connecting rural schools is that it enabled Chorus to build fibre-to-the-home connections for many rural communities. thedownload.co.nz The Download | In brief 3 FIBRE INSTALLS PEAK, UPTAKE CLIMBS Fibre connections on the Chorus There is a clear move to faster plans Most of this is down to the rise in network peaked in the first quarter to and greater data use. The number of streaming video. This is reflected in September 2018. During this period gigabit fibre connections on the Chorus time-of-day statistics, which show Chorus installed a record 46,000 network now stands at 44,000. That is average throughput on the network fibre connections. A further 38,000 up 22 percent on the previous quarter. now peaks at around 8.30pm connections were added in the second Chorus says most connections, about in the evening. quarter to December. 71 percent of the total, are now on By the end of the year, fibre uptake 100Mbps or greater. had climbed to 51 percent, with demand About seven in 10 broadband stronger than during the same period connections are on unlimited data in 2017. With 517,000 connections on plans. This reflects the increased fibre, these now make up a third of all amount of data consumed per Chorus’ 1.5 million connections. connection. In the December quarter, Slower speed copper ADSL the average data consumed across connections have fallen by 25 percent the network was 235GB, for Chorus in the past year. There are up from 221GB in the now 374,000 connections. Some of this September quarter. is down to customers moving to the Chorus says fibre faster VDSL (Very-high-bit-rate digital users now average subscriber line) technology, or to fibre.