By Corrina Gestro-Best and Cheryl Smeaton, WestREAP
Imagine a 260k stretch of coastline extending from Ross, south of Hokitika to Haast and Jackson Bay, as far south on the West Coast as one can travel overland.
Our WestREAP has 13 small communities of between 50 and 350 households scattered along a main highway, engaged in hospitality, agriculture and retail, with four schools and a Marae, Te Tauraka waka a Māui at Bruce Bay.
Tourists boost our population 5000 people + per day. Yet our region is known as a technology black spot. In 2018, is it unreasonable to expect that people in any region should be able to use a mobile phone or go online, or Skype their teacher? While the Government had plans for 86% fibre cover by 2023, there was little for South Westland in that timeframe. We concluded we had to come up with our own ideas.
Then the Principal at Westland High School said so many families didn’t have access to the internet that he wanted the school to become a hot-spot for the community. Every school in New Zealand is capable of that but no-one seemed to know how to do it. We did! WestREAP brought Mana Whenua and our schools together with Ivan Lomax and Leon Symes from East Coast wireless provider WiFi Connect. We travelled together and learned about our Alps, our IT capability and our priority areas. We formed relationships with local providers. We pooled resources with Ngati Waewae and Ngati Makaawhio e Runanga rua and supported young people to learn the basics of building the infrastructure and maintaining the service, administration and marketing.
We worked with Vodafone and Spark to get access to mobile coverage technology to enhance the WiFi product and deliver mobile coverage for 50 metres around a modem. Enough of those in a community with a couple of strategically placed poles and there’s cover throughout that town for anyone passing through.
Now we have completed the initial infrastructure from Fox Glacier School through to and including Bruce Bay and almost 100 households are receiving unlimited broadband at between 5 and 10mbs for a low cost each month.
More than another 100 homes in black spot areas north of Hokitika and through to Kumara and inland are also receiving service through the relationship between WiFi Connect and local company JV Electronics.
The cost to those families is less than what they would pay anywhere in New Zealand. Businesses, farms and industries pay double the household cost though the capability may be a little higher and their previous satellite option was up to 800% higher in cost and sporadic.
People are reporting the service is reliable and affordable and that having access to the technology has changed their lives and improved their ability to conduct their business at home.
It wasn’t our project, it belonged to the community and they made it happen. Our interest was purely in supporting those living in remote locations to get access to the Internet so they could educate themselves and their family, secure resources and services online and be able to communicate with the world at large from their own home. We did!