Community Board Notes

The Community Board is currently working with several community groups and individuals to support a possible bid for the government funded roll out of Ultrafast Broadband (UFB or fibre) within the town and extension of rural phone and internet services for the entire district. The government has recently issued a ROI for interested parties and the SWDC will consider whether they wish to/are able to respond to this ROI over the next couple of weeks. The Martinborough Community Board is hoping to support any bid in any way they can.

Why do we want UFB in Martinborough? The reasons are many and varied but I will outline some of them below…
• The current connection in Martinborough is very slow and getting worse – this is particularly true for residents outside the VDSL area. The rural connection is varied and there are mobile blackspots.
• Our schools are moving towards being fully digital – UFB will allow our kids to engage with all the resources available to them on the net and to interact with the school community from home. (Most schools already have UFB)
• Our health centre can serve us better and offer better services with UFB.
• UFB will allow business growth – we already have many anecdotal stories of businesses that wish to expand or setup here but can’t because of the state of our internet connection. Many of our vineyards and businesses are on the outskirts of town – UFB allows us to extend a faster connection to these businesses – it may not be UFB but it will be a lot better than what is currently available.
• The wide distribution of UFB throughout NZ means that the files businesses use and the digital content we can access from home (movies etc) get bigger and bigger – without UFB this becomes harder and harder to access.
• UFB is increasingly being linked to real estate values and demand
• UFB will allow people to work from home more successfully and reduce the time spent commuting.
• The world is changing fast and without UFB long term we will get left behind.

The economic, social, cultural and environmental benefits of UFB are well documented – if anyone would like more information please contact me on victoria@victoriaread.co.nz and I can email you a document describing some of these.
Have a great April everyone