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Fibre Optic Plans for New Zealand Spark Mobile Broadband Debate

Plans in New Zealand to take fibre optic broadband cables to all homes have been met by suggestions that concentrating on mobile broadband might be a better, and cheaper, alternative. This follows the recent news that BT is set to invest £1.5 billion in a fibre optic cable network to improve the UK's broadband speeds.

The plans in New Zealand are part of a government initiative to bring the country's broadband coverage and quality in line with the best in the rest of the world. Mobile communications company Qualcomm, however, are vocally pushing the idea that a country-wide mobile broadband network might be a cheaper and less disruptive solution. Qualcomm country manager Robert Hart is expecting vast improvements in the speed of mobile broadband services in the next few years and predicts that mobile broadband could be as fast as 100mbps by 2011, the same maximum target speed BT has set on its fibre optic broadband network.

Mobile broadband technology has developed quickly recently but fibre optics cables are still currently seen as the way towards super fast broadband, to bring the UK in line with the likes of Japan and South Korea, who are currently leading the way in terms of broadband speed and coverage, both cable led and mobile. If these mobile broadband predictions are realistic, however, we could see a radical rethink of the UK's broadband strategy, with mobile broadband taking the lead much sooner than predicted.

14/08/2008
Author: CompareBroadbandUK staff writer

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