Broadband lack costs NZ big film bucks

While Telecom trumpets its success in supplying the Narnia production with its internet needs, the Screen Council is presenting a vastly different picture.

The council issued a news release this week decrying the poor state of broadband in New Zealand and saying it is causing the local film industry to lose out on projects.

"A lack of high-speed broadband is inhibiting the growth of screen production," said executive director Tim Thorpe.

"Other countries are able to provide this, and New Zealand production and post-production companies are at an increasing disadvantage."

Film and television productions are increasingly needing not only fast download and upload speeds, but high amounts of bandwidth at variable times. These needs are not being addressed commercially for a fair and reasonable price, Thorpe said.

The council is seeking access to the Government-funded, super-fast Advanced Network, a research and education network backed by the Ministry of Research, Science and Technology. The network is being built by TelstraClear and should be working in the second half of next year.

Some critics of the council's request suggest the network should not be used for commercial purposes, such as making movies and television, but Thorpe said allowing access would not be outside its original intent.

"The initial brief for the network indicated that the creative industries would be able to access the Advanced Network," he said, adding that many of the film industry's projects are cultural in nature.

Also, he said, crown research institutes were being given access, and many of them were required to generate commercial returns as part of their mandates.

The network would also have plenty of unused capacity, so it was not as though the film industry would be depriving any educational or scientific organisations, Thorpe argued.

It was also a case of not having any alternative. "If there was a commercial network providing the same speed and service that the Advanced Network is going to do, then we would not be having this discussion."

Telecom, for its part, last week issued a release hailing its network as "part of the magic behind the filming of The Chronicles of Narnia - The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe."

The company laid fibre cable to the production's main Hobsonville studio complex, then provided connectivity with the film's remote locations 1200km away in the South Island.

Telecom also said it provided international connectivity through its 50 per cent-owned Southern Cross Cable Network, and gave Narnia producers the ability to scale the speed of their circuit from five to 100 megabits a second, as required.

The film's unit production manager, Tim Coddington, was quoted in Telecom's release saying the company set up a wireless network that "wowed our American colleagues".

He was also impressed with Telecom's ability to arrange networks in remote locations.

"It was pretty basic, but we could access our network from a tent in the mountains at 2Mbps."

Coddington also suggested that New Zealand's geographical remoteness was a disadvantage for film production crews.

"Telecommunications systems mitigate these disadvantages, and without the support of Telecom, the New Zealand film industry might struggle to attract and complete projects such as Narnia."

But Thorpe said such set-ups were project-based and not the norm, thus not accessible to most productions.

"To compare the Narnias and Lord of the Rings to the rest of the sector is a little unfair. The budgets available to Narnia just don't compare with budgets available to other screen productions," he said. "It's not the norm for the screen production sector."

Thorpe gave several examples to illustrate the problems. One smaller production company had to pay tens of thousands to get some data overseas. Another company was facing a $2000 bill for a data download that would take 20 hours from the US, and if it wanted it faster the rate would go up significantly.

Another company had a $1 million project offer lined up but it couldn't guarantee that it would be able to reliably send data back and forth to the US, so the deal fell through.

The president of InternetNZ, Colin Jackson, said Telecom's work on Narnia was the exception, not the rule.

"What a pity they can't provide decent connectivity to the rest of New Zealand.

"If they can put 2 megabits into a tent in the mountains, why can they only put 128 kilobits [upload speed] into the suburban homes where most New Zealanders live?

"If you're Hollywood, perhaps you can afford to pay the kind of prices Telecom charges, but I don't know if anybody else can."