EDITORIAL: Bay business brain shows he has fibre

By ANTONY PHILLIPS | 12th March 2010

 THIS editorial column has had cause to bemoan the state of telecommunications in the Bay, as have contributing correspondents and columnists.

The fact is Hawke's Bay does not enjoy reliable cellular phone and internet service. Part of this is down to intermittent problems - some understandable, some less so - on the part of providers. And part of it appears to be due to poor, or no, connectivity and service in geographical locations surprisingly close to our twin cities.

We have been told by the entrepreneurial owners of a major Bay winery, just 10 minutes' drive from Hastings and which exports to the world, not to try phoning them on mobile. The call won't get through. Such stories, including problems with connectivity and speed of internet, abound.

There are similar frustrations at a national level and we applaud the initiative of Hawke's Bay's Rod Drury who has put his hand up to do something about it.

Mr Drury, the owner of software service firm Xero, is teaming with other Kiwi business brains including Sam Morgan and Sir Stephen Tindall on a $900m project to build a high-speed internet link between New Zealand, Australia and the United States.

Financial backers are being sought for the project, dubbed "Pacific Fibre".

Mr Drury, who has been a critic of New Zealand broadband links, hopes the service would be five times faster than the current connection, partly owned by Telecom, and that it would allow unlimited downloads.

Is such blue-skies thinking in corporate boardrooms relevant to the Hawke's Bay? The answer is an unequivocal "yes".

Mr Drury's message about New Zealand - that "people love to live and work here, but we're just not playing on the global stage," - should resonate loudly in the Bay.

We want to live here for the unrivalled lifestyle Hawke's Bay offers. But to survive and prosper as a region, we also need to be able to reliably connect, communicate and do business with the wider world.