Southland Digital Strategy
The goal of the “Southland Digital Strategy: Connecting to our future” is:
“Southland is an excellent place to live, learn and do business, enabled by a world class, affordable telecommunications network which serves the whole of our community.”
Requirements of telecommunications in Southland are:
- Always on, always available
- Always best connected to the best service
- Secure
- Affordable
- Content and services match user needs
Key infrastructure developments for Southland identified in the strategy are:
- Extend the existing broadband networks to provide wireless broadband coverage to all non-serviced rural Southland dwellings
- Construct an open-access municipal fibre-optic network in and around Invercargill
- Inter-connect at the Southland Peering Exchange in Invercargill
- Install a point of presence for the Kiwi Advanced Research and Education Network (KAREN) in Invercargill
- Construct a public-good South Island fibre-optic cable backbone
- Promote Southland as the preferred landing point for the proposed second trans-Tasman fibre-optic cable.
Southland Digital Forum
As part of the public consultation process for the Digital Strategy, Venture Southland organised the Southland Digital Forum on 24 July 2008 with speakers from Southland and Wellington. Key presentations and documents from the forum may be downloaded below: