Brian Rudman: Real broadband on the way - if our power poles can stand the weight

The price of ultra-fast broadband is more than likely going to mean one more wire to put up with. Photo / Herald on Sunday

In recent days my local power company, Vector, has been popping up on television and in the Herald pages, promoting itself as the obvious provider of ultra-fast broadband to our doors.

Like other power providers and assorted telcos, it's after the $1.5 billion carrot the Government is offering to help bring fibre-optic cabling to every New Zealander.

And very nice even semi-fast broadband would be compared with what now masquerades under that name. My worry is, will the wobbly power pole at my front gate handle any more weight. There are times when two squabbling mynahs seem enough to get it swaying.

A stiff breeze certainly does. Indeed, the only thing keeping it up seems to be the assorted power and telephone cables, which act like tent guy ropes.

Until now I'd innocently assumed something as new-fangled and hi-tech as ultra-fast broadband via fibre optic cable would arrive courtesy of an equally hi-tech hole in the ground.

But the reality is rather more Heath Robinson. For most Aucklanders who, like me, live with ageing power poles and the tangled wirescape that goes with them, then the price of ultra-fast broadband is more than likely going to mean one more wire to put up with.

The Government hasn't exactly specified how the cables have to get to your door from broadband central, but by limiting its contribution to $1.5 billion and calling for competitive expressions of interest, it's a good guess that no one is going to go broke by offering the environmentally optimum underground option.

A cost study prepared last year for the Treasury by Milner Consulting concluded that the Government's $1.5 billion "will provide about 50 per cent of the investment required to deliver fibre past 75 per cent of New Zealand premises".

Report author Dr Murray Milner says "it is obvious that the lowest deployment costs are required ... to minimise investment in a fibre to the door rollout".

The cheapest method is, he says, "aerial deployment", for which, he says, using "existing good quality" poles can cost as little $15 to $20 a metre".

But he admits this is not usually the case, and says a more typical aerial cost is likely to be $30 to $50 a metre.

He notes that "this approach is used widely overseas, where environmental issues involving visual pollution are not a concern. However, in many cities and towns the issue of visual pollution can be an inhibitor to the use of this approach".

Indeed, "some local councils actively discourage the deployment of new aerial plant".

He singles out Auckland City Council, which he says has been "very negative with respect to aerial deployment in the past, but appears to be more receptive today".

The only appeal of overhead wires is its relative cheapness. Trenching methods can vary in price from $50 a metre to $100 to $200 and possibly more.

Balancing this price differential is that a downside of the aerial solution is that it has a useful life of 20 to 30 years compared to 40 to 50 for a buried system.

Eight years ago, when Aussie telecommunications giant TelstraClear announced plans to string large black communication cables across Auckland from Vector's existing power poles, Vector screamed blue murder and threatened court action, and I was right behind the power company.

Just about everyone who had seen Telstra's ugly black cables hanging halfway down Wellington's power poles joined in.

Vector's concerns were not so much environmental as worry about the deleterious effect on their infrastructure.

Then-Vector chief executive Patrick Strange worried about how the new cables would require "significant pole replacement, foundation-strengthening and staying" to say nothing of the retensioning of many wires.

Present chief executive Simon Mackenzie says the fibre-optic cables about to be introduced are a different beast. They're no thicker than an existing electricity conductor and sit at the same level as existing wires, so the wind loading is not affected.

They're also lightweight, and coloured a bluey-grey to blend into the landscape. He says I won't notice them, and I'm almost convinced. I just hope the old power pole out front is the same.

After all, it took only one extra straw to bring the camel down.