KEY POINTS:
If the Digital Summit wasn't exactly gripping content-wise from beginning to end it certainly had its moments.
Highlights for me included communications minister David Cunliffe's speech, in which he outlined some pretty ambitious targets for the broadband market (20 megabit per second broadband for most of the
country and a second undersea fibre cable to Australia) and suggested Government was willing to step in an co-invest where the industry was unwilling to do so on its own.
Chris Anderson's live cross from Silicon Valley rehashed the main themes outlined in his book The Long Tail, but was nevertheless illuminating.
Telecom boss Paul Reynolds shone in his first real speaking engagement at an industry forum, coming across as straightforward, pragmatic and emphatic in his desire to make Telecom a more customer-friendly business. The panel discussion featuring the main telco bosses and Rod Drury was highly productive. Rod's reflections on the summit are here.
There were some misses - Pete Hodgson's speech was rambling and off-topic (see more on that from TUANZ boss Ernie Newman).
I have to agree with Russell Brown who found the virtual part of the conference - where people could congregate in Second Life to watch the proceedings, slightly inane (publicaddress.net).
I've never understood the appeal of the platform either and just get sick of the press releases I get sent telling me another company has set up a presence in Second Life. Like we really care.
The key now is to get the ball rolling on delivering the type of outcomes Cunliffe was talking about. Reynolds said he wanted to work together with other telecoms operators to share infrastructure where possible - that's a very sensible suggestion that needs to be followed up by some kind of formal working group.
If by the end of 2010 we have 20Mbps broadband access to 90 per cent of New Zealanders; a second fibre cable across the Tasman increasing the supply of international data capacity; and contestability of the Telecommunications Service Obligation so Telecom's competitors don't have to keep paying to subsidise the cost of Telecom reaching non-viable customers, this Digital Summit will be looked back on as a success.
Anything less is simply not enough to meet the Government's stated goals of climbing the ranks of the OECD in broadband comparisons.
Worth checking out is the New Zealand Broadband Map, which the State Services Commission has developed in conjunction with Wellington software developer Project X (the guys behind Zoomin.co.nz).
It's a mash-up map based on ZoomIn's mapping software that plots the coverage of the major broadband providers and allows broadband users to note their location and comment on the status of broadband in their area.
As the map gathers comments and new features, it could become a very useful resource for gaining a picture of the broadband landscape and the issues experienced by broadband users.
