InternetNZ Blog

I was at a conference at the weekend where Senator Kate Lundy of Australia spoke about the need for the federal government to better work with the regions. She emphasised the need for a region-by-region solution rather than one size fits all.

InternetNZ is keen to support projects or initiatives that further our goals to protect and promote the Internet for New Zealanders. "Support" is both financial and non-financial.

This is a way for us to maximise the value to the wider community with our limited resources. By helping people and organisations aligned with our goals, our efforts are multiplied many times over what we can do on our own.

This is a guest post from Jay Daley, Chief Executive of .nz Registry Services.

The best way to explain ENUM is to start by talking about email and remind ourselves how that works.

Telecom’s announcement on Monday that its revised bid to participate in the UFB project includes a structural separation of Chorus is a bonus, but not a panacea.

It’s important to keep in mind that with UFB, Telecom isn’t the only option. They are a viable bidder but so are other parties, as is evident from the range of bids that have been lodged.  The Regional Fibre Group is no doubt as ready to get laying fibre as Chorus is. With that caveat aside, back to separation.

This afternoon, Telecom has announced that as part of its revised bid under the Government's Ultra-fast Broadband Initiative, it has proposed some form of structural separation - a new network company, Chorus2, would be created and legally separated from Telecom.

The Stuff story is here: http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/3982747/Telecom-confirms-split

There’s a danger that people pushing the case for fibre need to be careful about- a focus on Internet connection speed alone risks missing the rest of the picture.

Look at Brian Fallow’s “Do we even need ultra-fast broadband?” in the NZ Herald and Ernie Newman’s response “Don't fret, our broadband policy is sound”.

Is access to the Internet a human right - or should it be?

Jon Penney was the most recent InternetNZ Cyberlaw Fellow at Victoria University of Wellington. He studied aspects of this question, with a particular focus on whether anything in the existing framework of human rights law could give a pointer towards answering that question.

This is a guest post from Jay Daley, Chief Executive of .nz Registry Services

Net neutrality is a complex issue with some strongly opposed views that at times sound more like religion than sensible argument, so this article is an attempt to provide some sense for those still not completely sure what it is all about.  Be warned though, that this article is not an unbiased appraisal of the arguments, it is written from the perspective of a confirmed net-head.

Given my interest and work in privacy-related issues, I’ve done a fair number of presentations and attending seminars/workshops on privacy. In retrospect, most of them tended to be uni-dimensional, either presenting a point of view or preaching to the converted.

That’s why I think the privacy roundtables we jointly organised with the Law Commission on 21st and 22nd of June were somewhat unique and successful.

Last night InternetNZ held its first open evening for members and non-members. The evening was held in the function room at Toto Restaurant in central Auckland and was well attended by twenty people.

The evening featured a presentation on ‘social media’ by InternetNZ member Sandra Newton. Sandra runs Essentee, a North Shore-based website optimisation, design and management firm, and her presentation covered off the use of social media in New Zealand.