Latest / Best of Business / Mark Aue: Chorus NZ CEO on making the infrastructure priority list

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Mark Aue: Chorus NZ CEO on making the infrastructure priority list · Best of Business

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  Speaker 1: You're listening to a podcast from Newstalk SEDB. Follow this
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  Speaker 2: We had the BEG Infrastructure Commission report Land today. It
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  Speaker 2: announced seventeen projects that at once treated as national priorities.
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  Speaker 2: The bulk of those projects are being run by the
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  Speaker 2: public sector, but one private company has managed to get
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  Speaker 2: on the list too. In that company is Chorus Mark, Owa.
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  Speaker 2: Is the CEO hey Mark City head. Now, the recommendation
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  Speaker 2: here is that you should be able to expand the
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  Speaker 2: fiber broadband from eighty seven percent coverage of the country
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  Speaker 2: to ninety five percent. That eight percent difference where is
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  Speaker 2: that in the country.
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  Speaker 3: It's all over the country heather from the top of
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  Speaker 3: the north to the bottom of the south. So it'll
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  Speaker 3: pick up another four hundred thousand New Zealand businesses and
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  Speaker 3: homes and probably across a thousand communities.
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  Speaker 4: To say, why haven't they got it already, Well, we've
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  Speaker 4: done the original UFB deployment, that is, you know what
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  Speaker 4: has kicked off over the last decade or so, and
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  Speaker 4: that's now expanded fiber access across eighty seven percent of the.
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  Speaker 3: Population of where we all live, work and play. But
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  Speaker 3: this is now a time to develop a rural connectivity strategy.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, now is it like anything else? The start of
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  Speaker 2: it is the cheapest bit, and the further along you go,
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  Speaker 2: the more expensive it gets.
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  Speaker 3: Pretty much, and so the further you go out from
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  Speaker 3: urban the more the costs grow exponentially.
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  Speaker 2: Do you think we need to get to one hundred percent?
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  Speaker 2: And can we even?
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  Speaker 3: I think ninety five percent, based on the assessments we've done,
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  Speaker 3: is a pretty good use case, and we can see
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  Speaker 3: material economic and productivity benefit to come back from that
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  Speaker 3: roughly in order of seventeen billion dollars over the next
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  Speaker 3: ten years. I think the reality beyond ninety five percent,
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  Speaker 3: the economics are hard to stack up, just because of
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  Speaker 3: New Zealand land mass and where we all live on
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  Speaker 3: a distributed basis.
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  Speaker 2: So if the government backed it today, how long would
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  Speaker 2: it take you to get to ninety five.
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  Speaker 3: Look, realistically, it's probably over five to ten years as
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  Speaker 3: a program, But I think the benefit is we could
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  Speaker 3: be up and running shove already in the next few month.
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  Speaker 3: So you know, we're not testing theory here that we've
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  Speaker 3: done this before very successfully, and I think that's part
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  Speaker 3: of the endorsement of course, we've got a good track
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  Speaker 3: record of doing this.
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  Speaker 2: I love that. I love that you sounded apologetic for
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  Speaker 2: five to ten years. I mean, you realize five to
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  Speaker 2: ten years is the blink of an eye when it
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  Speaker 2: comes to infrastructure projects in this country, given how long
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  Speaker 2: we wait for anything to be built, right, it's pretty quick.
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  Speaker 3: Well, it is. But I think we believe in fiber
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  Speaker 3: as a gold standard, and actually we want to play
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  Speaker 3: a role in bridging that digital divide. And you're actually
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  Speaker 3: seeing more and more core infrastructure come out of the
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  Speaker 3: regions and rural communities, and putting digital infrastructure like fiber
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  Speaker 3: in is a way to actually enable those other sectors.
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  Speaker 2: Look, this seems to me a no brainer, right that
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  Speaker 2: in twenty twenty five, in a digital world, given how
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  Speaker 2: much connectivity there is, how much business is now relyan
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  Speaker 2: on this, it seems a complete no brainer that we
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  Speaker 2: have to get it to at least this level. Do
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  Speaker 2: we actually need a report to tell us.
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  Speaker 3: Oh, look, it's a great question. I think what we
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  Speaker 3: take out of the endorsement out of the Infrastructure Commission
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  Speaker 3: today is that there's a recognition that rural connectivity is
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  Speaker 3: a priority problem. But at the same time, there's an
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  Speaker 3: opportunity and we've got solutions here that we can move through.
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  Speaker 3: And again, as I say, we're not testing theory. We've
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  Speaker 3: actually seen the benefits and the ability that's fiber brains.
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  Speaker 2: But Mark, this is a no brainer.
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  Speaker 1: You know what, I know what.
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  Speaker 2: Anybody listening to this right now knows it. So do
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  Speaker 2: you think without a report like this a government would
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  Speaker 2: drag its heels.
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  Speaker 3: Look, I'm hoping not. And of course we'll say it's
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  Speaker 3: a no brainer, but there's a lot of people out
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  Speaker 3: there probably take a cynical view that. Of course, for
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  Speaker 3: it is going to say that fiber is great. But
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  Speaker 3: I think by any standard, in any report, including our
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  Speaker 3: own Commerce Commission, would recognize that the gold standard and
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  Speaker 3: broadband technology is fiber.
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  Speaker 2: Listen, Mark, I really appreciate your time. Thank you for
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  Speaker 2: talking to us. As Mark Oware, whose Chorus is chief executive.
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