Research and Markets has released its report 'New Zealand - Infrastructure - NGNs and FttH', in which it says the country trails behind most of the western world in the adoption of high-speed broadband access.

The report says "the introduction of ADSL2+ services, facilitated by the unbundling of the local loop (ULL), will allow for faster access of new services including VoIP and IPTV, which will also be critical for the growth of digital media services. However it will take a couple of years for these services to become widespread and it will not be until 2012 that Telecom New Zealand's Next Generation Network (NGN) network will have been completed."

Unbundling of the local loop occurred in most economically advanced nations years ago. The talk of deployment of ADSL2+ when most of the world is progressing rapidly to FTTH is just madness.

Furthermore the reticulation of free or pay television content via NGNs using IPTV will not occur until SkyNZ comes into the 21st century with their attitude towards modern technolgy and get over their aversion to IP based networks.

Peter Griffin, a reporter at the New Zealand Herald, also writes about his experiences in Amsterdam, and the development of "CityNet" a 40,000 home brownfield deployment of Fibre to the Home.