Chorus has entered into a conditional agreement with Crown Fibre Holdings (CFH), which gives it the option to bring forward part of CFH’s existing investment funding earlier in the build of the ultra-fast broadband (UFB) network.
Fitch Ratings has placed Telecom's long- and short-term debt on "rating watch negative" in the wake of the decision to spin off Chorus as a separate company.
Statistics NZ will receive $58 million over the next four years to update its IT systems, it was announced in Budget 2011 today.
A statement from Statistics Minister Maurice Williamson says the funding will go towards the programme ‘Statistics 2020: Achieving the Statistical System of the Future’, which aims to update the department’s IT systems.
“Statistics New Zealand has a unique IT environment,” Williamson says. “It has about 250 systems that produce statistics about key economic and social data.”
In addition, the department receives an extra $3.8 million in capital funding over the next four years, totalling $12.7 million over 10 years. “The extra funding will enable the organisation to transform the way it produces statistics.It will increase productivity and reduce the longer-term cost of statistics production.
“The funding will benefit individuals, communities, and local and central government agencies which base their decisions on robust information,” Williamson says.
igovt benefits
Other ICT-related spending includes $27.6 million over the next two years for igovt services, which are intended to make it easier for people to interact with government online.
“The igovt services provide an easy and secure way of accessing government services online and proving identity,” says Internal Affairs Minister Nathan Guy in a statement.
Virtualisation and storage-area network specialist VIP has begun to establish 17 offices around the country, each with a datacentre, linked in a replicating fibre network. It aims to provide one of the first productive applications of the government-sponsored UFB network.
Telecom has announced that it has provided a "binding offer to Crown Fibre Holdings (CFH) in respect of the Crown’s Ultra-fast Broadband (UFB) initiative, and has accelerated the reorganisation of its business to meet the competitive challenge of a fibre-based world."
Crown Fibre Holdings has announced that has selected Vector for prioritised negotiations in the Auckland area regarding the Ultra-Fast Broadband initiative.
An equity provision should be part of the Ultra Fast Broadband rollout to ensure poor, urban communities aren’t last in line for faster broadband, says Russell Burt, principal of Pt England School in Auckland.
Minister Steven Joyce says he met with the Huawei CEO when he was visiting Shenzhen as part of an ICT trade mission to China last month.
Crown Fibre Holdings chair Simon Allen has defended board member Murray Milner in light of Labour’s claim over possible conflict of interest.
Two fibres will run into every home under the ultrafast broadband deployment plan, John Greenhough, chief technical officer of Crown Fibre Holdings (CFH), told an audience at the recent Huawei Broadband Summit in Auckland.