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Digital Dipton will make life easier for Bill English
Posted Tue 18 November 2008 @ 2:17 p.m. by Ernie
Bill English is to use Skype to stay in touch with the electorate, the Southland Times reports. Great! The more senior MPs who rely on broadband, the more awareness of the need to improve the reach and speeds. Bill will be able to use the SSC's Fibre Map to check out how his electorate is faring in the fibre race, and his constituents' can test their actual speeds on this speed test. I'm sure the politically-astute telcos will have mapped his home and made sure it is well served, but the rubber will hit the road when rank and file Southland constituents want to Skype him. We'll watch with interest. Its a good plan - other MPs please take note.

Categories: Fixed line carriers \| Innovation \| ISPs \| Light relief \| Vendors \| Wireless carriers
Comments (3)

3 Comments

Robin says:
Up to a point... Bill's Southland constituents will do okay if they want to Skype him as around 96% of Southland dwellings can get reliable, affordable broadband service from Woosh Wireless (through the Venture Southland "Whole of Community Broadband Project") and Telecom NZ. This will not be true for Bill's constituents further to the east. His constituents in the Catlins currently need the BIF fund, or equivalent to come through before either Telecom NZ, or Woosh provide them with decent terrestrial Internet.
Added: 21 November 2008, 2:24 p.m.

Lesta G says:
Minor point http://www.speedtest.net/ better test as a few local servers
Added: 21 November 2008, 4:08 p.m.

Hoane says:
The servers do not have to be local to provide a better test experience, they have to be better "connected" to your internet service provider. Using speedtest.net I get poor results if I test against the Wellington server (even though I am in Wellington). I get slightly better results when testing to the Auckland server. I get great results when testing to Adelaide (Velocity.net). This may not seem logical but it is due to the fact that this provider has a huge pipe to Sydney, as does my service provider. The "national backbone" which is often criticised as being overloaded, is obviosly not the choke point that many make out. Your results are therefore more reflective of the investment the test node ISP has made in national/international connectivity rather than your service provider's broadband service alone. If the Auckland and wellington ISPs hosting the speedtest.net servers provided bigger & uncontended pipes to the national internet for these test servers then the test results would be better. But then why would they do that when the test is free? Also the investment made in this area makes the service for other networks look better. Best thing is to make the user thinlk their connection is poor, get them to sign up to an on-net access service and then do the test on-net making the performance miraculously improve. It is marketing, not rocket science.
Added: 27 November 2008, 2:48 p.m.

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