Gas mains piping in e-commerce

By ADAM GIFFORD it writer

A leading expert on networks says a new high-speed fibre optic network launched in Auckland yesterday will create "disruptive" change to existing ways of communicating.

"If you're living on an island and you're used to taking a ferry to work every day, and somebody builds a bridge, it's not just a better commute to work ... in fact, you're not living on an island any more," said David Isenberg, who was in Auckland yesterday to help launch the UnitedNetworks network.

Dr Isenberg's 1997 essay The Rise of the Stupid Network, which led to him leaving his job at AT & T, argued that the internet overturned the assumptions telephone companies worked on.

While telephone companies wanted to create "intelligent" networks from which they could sell applications as services, the internet allowed people to create new applications on their own computers or gain access to devices, using raw bandwidth to bypass the telcos.

"When you have disruptive technologies, the incumbents do not bring them to market. The advantage is to new and young and swift companies," he told the 200 people at the Aotea Centre launch.

UnitedNetworks, an electricity lines company, got into the fibre market after seeing the potential of the standby gas mains in the Auckland and Wellington central business districts it bought with the assets of gas company Orion.

While the technology is "disruptive," the UnitedNetworks rollout has been the least disruptive of the fibre projects now going on in Auckland, because the cable has been dragged down existing pipes.

Chief executive Dan Warnock said it had been possible to lay up to a kilometre of cable a day, compared with the 100 metres a day possible through trenching.

About 48km of fibre had been rolled out in Auckland and Wellington in just 12 weeks and connected to the Southern Cross cable.

The project was still within its overall $30 million budget. This meant its CBD networks were live considerably earlier and at a lower cost than the networks being put in by TelstraSaturn and other traditional telephone companies.

Mr Warnock said that UnitedNetworks was unique in that it was wholesaling raw bandwidth, and did not intend to be a retail seller of telecommunications services.

It already had a telecommunications company, which he would not name, as a customer.

Mr Warnock said New Zealand has been bandwidth-starved but now gigabytes of data could be moved in a second, rather than megabytes.

"The new networks will help push the growth of e-commerce."