Axia Netmedia teams with Voda NZ for NZ's $1.5b NBN

Stuart Corner
Monday, 10 May 2010 12:35

IT Industry - Strategy

Vodafone New Zealand had teamed up with Canadian FTTH specialist, Axia Netmedia - one of the bidders for Australia's cancelled NBN Mark 1 project - to bid for the New Zealand Government's $NZ1.5b ultra-fast broadband network project.

The NZ government has committed to building an FTTH network to serve an initial 25 urban areas within six years and the 33 largest urban areas by population by 2021.

Vodafone CEO Russell Stanners said the alliance with Axia would enable Vodafone to become a retail provider on the network, and would provide it with much needed fibre backhaul for its mobile network.

"Mobile companies are one of the biggest users of fibre in the world - we need it to connect our cell sites together'¦[and] we will work with Axia and hopefully with the government to deliver to New Zealanders the infrastructure to take us to the next economic level."

Stammers added: "Of all the countries in the world, New Zealand stands to benefit the most from the building of a next-generation network. We are remote from our markets, we have a small population but we think smarter, we work harder to develop our intellectual property. If we build a network that allows us to interact with our customers overseas then all New Zealand benefits from the economic gain it will bring."

Telecom NZ meanwhile has said  it would provide a fully compliant preferred commercial model proposal, and an alternative commercial model proposal focussed on delivering a national network using its fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) programme "as the logical springboard for the Government's vision of fibre-to-the-home (FTTH)."

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