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Data Networking
Electronic data networking started with the introduction of the
first modems in the 1970s. Data networking became widely available
with the coming of the Internet, and in consequence low speed data
networking became affordable to organisations, including small
businesses and even individuals, in the 1990s.
We are now at the exciting stage of development where very high
speed data communication can also be affordable. Our challenge is
to facilitate the changes needed to release and realise the potential of very high speed, affordable, data communications. As
often happens the technological advances have moved ahead more
quickly than the changes in thinking and understanding, and hence
realisation of the potential. While long held 'truths' about data
communications have been invalidated, many people and
telecommunications supplier organisations still cling to the old
views. However bandwidth should no longer be considered as a
necessarily scarce resource to be carefully managed. The real cost
of increasing bandwidth over a given fibre optic routes is a small
incremental one.
End-User Control
The move today is towards end-user control of networking, with the networks themselves only responsibility for getting a 'bit' from
one address to another very fast and very reliably. Intelligent
services are added at the edges of the network where the user has
control. Such networks impose few restrictions on the user,
providing the best possible basis for innovation.
We now require a mind-set that sees data communication as a
commodity to be exploited, unfettered by close consideration of
charges. In the early 1960s, Dawson Donaldson, Director General of
the Post Office, said when talking about telephone services "Local
subscribers should be able to call 'without fear of fees' the
centre that meets their social, domestic and business needs".
Just as free telephone dialing areas facilitated change a subscription
based access to national high speed networking will bring about a
cultural change in the way we use communications.
NGI-NZ are working to bring about these changes for New Zealand,
allowing the country to take its place among the leaders in
knowledge societies.
Neil James
Chair, NGI-NZ Society
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