KEY POINTS:
Many New Zealanders have been on the move at this time of year, to camping grounds and other favourite holiday spots, and to the homes of friends and families living in other towns and cities. We've been escaping from the daily grind, and looking to unwind and relax.
Some of us have wanted to stay in touch while on holiday, perhaps via mobile phone or connecting to the web occasionally.
Loyal Aucklanders might have used the web to get their daily fix of the Herald in places where they couldn't buy a copy of the paper during the holiday season.
Our mobiles and our broadband connections are symbols of a not-so-quiet revolution that has taken place in New Zealand over the past few years. And if you're a user of any telecommunications service, you should be interested in what this revolution means for you.
So what will this revolution deliver?
Telecommunications customers are less interested in the structure of this new world than they are in the services and products it can deliver to their homes and businesses around New Zealand - and how these products and services can make their lives happier, wealthier and wiser.
At the heart of Telecom's commitment to operational separation, under which the company has been split into three operational units, is our plan to roll out fibre and fast broadband to 80 per cent of customer lines over the next four years.
In practice, that means all towns and cities in New Zealand with more than 500 customer lines.
Ninety-nine per cent of these lines will be capable of supporting speeds of up to 10Mbps, while around 50 per cent will be capable of up to 20Mbps. This represents one of the most widely available fast broadband services anywhere in the world.
In other leading economies, fibre is generally only being made available in major conurbations.
Telecom's investment plans are a key contributor to the Government's digital strategy, which aims to encourage New Zealanders to turn on to faster broadband in greater numbers, and to use it in more innovative and productive ways.
Influential commentators such as the New Zealand Institute have also highlighted the economic and social gains that faster, more widely available broadband can bring.
So Telecom's commitment brings with it a grand opportunity for the nation's content and software developers to take advantage of this high-speed network and the footprint over which it will be rolled out.
Broadband currently reaches about 93 per cent of New Zealanders through their phone line, but only 38 per cent have subscribed to it. That statistic puts us out of kilter with many of the countries we like to compare ourselves with.
Telecom is not neglecting the country's rural and more isolated areas either. These are the places where so much of the national wealth is generated - and where some of us like to escape at this time of year. Many rural areas already have access to fixed-line broadband, but more can be done.
Telecom wants to work with central and local government, and others, to find ways of extending even further the reach of the fast broadband network we have committed to.
Over the next four years we'll be installing more than 3500 roadside cabinets to support the new high-speed network - one of the largest infrastructure projects in New Zealand in recent times.
To do this work we'll be recruiting hundreds of extra technicians, and installing 2500km of new fibre optic cable to connect to the new cabinets.
The prizes to be had can benefit us all. Most of the country's broadband blackspots will be cleaned up.
And we'll get an exciting new world of fast broadband, supporting innovative services, that's as ubiquitous as the Kiwi summer holiday by the beach.
That's worth having a revolution for, and it's why I'm looking forward to a busy 2008.
