Dial-up student eager for wireless

When you live 50km from the nearest secondary school, education by correspondence is a good option.

But when your internet connection is the old dial-up system, then remote schooling is time-consuming and tedious.

However, that's all about to change for 14-year-old Llewellyn Cadwallader, who lives with his mum and dad, Mina and Zach, on a hill country sheep farm about halfway between Wanganui and Raetihi.

The teenager has been doing the correspondence curriculum since the beginning of this year.

The family arrived to manage the farm late last year and he did go to secondary school in Ohakune. But that meant a 30km return trip to catch the bus each day.

Now, via correspondence school, his lessons include maths, English, science and computer studies and he communicates with his teachers via email.

But when the wireless broadband link fires into life in early November, Llewellyn knows the much speedier internet link will make his school lessons a breeze.

And not just for this student. Other houses in the area will link into the new service provided by Inspire Net, a Palmerston North company specialising in getting broadband to remote rural areas.

James Watts, the founder of Inspire Net, said his company had about 20,00 customers in a broad sweep in the central North Island.

Mr Watts said rural users were the "forgotten nation" in terms of broadband but his company was working to change that.

So far the company has installed 57 transmitting and receiving towers to date and the one at Kakatahi, about halfway up SH4 north of Wanganui, was the latest to go in.

"Now we need to install another tower at Raetihi that will be in line of sight with the Kakatahi tower," Mr Watts said.

"We expect to go live to Kakatahi in the first or second week of November," he says.

The company usually worked with communities of 10 farmers or more to get the service to an area. With those numbers Inspire Net installs the pole - worth about $9000 - without charge. The company recovers its costs from ongoing charges for the service.

The company has installed a similar service at Turakina Beach south of Wanganui, and was discussing services to potential users further south of Kakatahi, including Aberfeldy and Upokongaro, as well as Kai Iwi and Maxwell districts.

Mr Watts said each property owner pays a set-up fee of $350, which gives them a radio link on their house as well as Wi-Fi and phone connection.

Then for $87.50 a month they receive a phone link and 200 minutes of national toll calls ($17.50), as well as Inspire Net's standard data rates for 20GB ($70).