Gigatown turns into a Giga challenge for Chorus

One more post before bedtime, now that I'm back in the temporary VDSL equipped TUANZ cave in #gigatownporirua.

I've had a flight back from Auckland, (cut off from my feed to the internets) to think about what Ultra Fast Fibre's declaration of their central North Island patch as the 'Giganet' means for Chorus [NZX: CNU].

And what it means for us as users and how I think its the most exciting thing to happen in the UFB world since Northpower finished their build.

In military terms this has been a brilliant piece of asymmetric warfare, a judo throw that Vladimir Putin would be proud to call his own.

Chorus will now be compelled to re-evaluate the entire gigatown proposition because its just had a whole lot of the gloss removed:

1. The winning gigatown no longer enjoys the advantage of the 'Southern Hemispheres' fastest internet.
2. The 3 year stint as the gigatown is also meaningless as UFF have declared that its package will run until 2020 - which is the big bang year anyway in terms of UFB evolution
3. The winning gigatown will have the cheapest wholesale, residential gigabit service but that may not translate into much of an advantage in what will be a much broader residential gigabit market.
4. The winning gigatown will still enjoy the Alcatel Lucent innovation fund, but the economic development benefit is seriously diluted.

I think there will be quite a lot of angst out there in the gigatowns tomorrow (disclaimer I am part of the #gigatownporirua team) because the competition has required a lot of energy and commitment from largely volunteer teams (think Top Town meets social media). The competition and rivalry is fierce and intense, the creativity that has been unleashed is inspirational and overall it has got us all thinking about what the UFB can mean for our communities.

So what can Chorus do?

The options as I see them are:

1. Box on like nothing's happened
2. Use the 'Team Oracle USA' like clauses in the gigatown T&C's to pause and look for a reset
3. Match UFF and declare everybody a 'GIGATOWN' (my preferred option)
4. I think Chorus owe it to all the towns who have played the game by their rules and who have sunk what I think must be millions of dollars worth of community time and energy into gigatown to show that they are serious about our giganation.
5. So whats in it for us as users, this is the stuff that rocks
6. RSP's now have the incentive to get really creative with UFB products, speed is no longer a limitation!
7. The developer community can now start to build 'gigabit grade' products and services with a good sized local sandpit (even bigger if Chorus come to the party)
8. UFB consumers will get world class connectivity
9. The rest of the stack (backhaul and international) will get an increased incentive to open the pipes so we really will get genuine gigabit grade experiences
10. There are going to be huge possibilities in education and health
11. This will speed up the copper transition and force all the RSP's to get serious about UFB
12. The market for fast WiFi is going to go nuts!
13. Aussies are going to be sooo jealous 
14. The Government might feel so good about the giganet they'll get behind other good ideas like Northpower's rural fibre plans
15. The belt of towns from New Plymouth to Tauranga is hugely important to all our current export industries and it is home to our mighty 'Agritech' sector (think Gallaghers etc)  - which I believe is our best shot for a global ICT niche we can own. So the Giganet is really, really important to our collective future.

I've been involved in the fibre dream in NZ since 1999, when I first got a CityLink connection in downtown Wellington, I helped get regional fibre extended across Nelson, Marlborough, Tasman with NMi and the Broadband Challenge.

But this development today has got me more excited as it moves us from a rationed future (just one gigatown) to one that is brim full of possibilities (a whole giganation?) because the UFB is now really going to be Ultra Fast.

I think I need a lie down now, I hope I don't wake up tomorrow and find it was all a dream.

Chris O'Connell is the interim of CEO of the Tuanz, the Telecommunications Users Association of New Zealand and the director of Strategy for XandAR