Residents: Fairton in tech desert

“We moved here two years ago, but if I’d known before buying our house how bad it was I’d have thought twice before buying,” she said.

When Electricity Ashburton laid fibre cable to Fairton School, residents celebrated, believing that would end their time in the technology wilderness, Ms Geddes said, but that cable only provided high speed access to people living along Fairfield Avenue.

When Chorus began duplicating Electricity Ashburton’s programme, her frustration mounted. She’s adding Fairton’s discontent to the groundswell of dissatisfaction in Ashburton over the duplication of cables in the central business area.

“We don’t even have old style broadband and in Ashburton they have two lots of cables. We’re all feeling a bit ripped off.”

She’s studying full-time and has a teenager and that means a fast internet connection is essential, but Ms Geddes said she’s forced to spend most of her days using the free service at the Ashburton Library. Other times she drives towards town and works from her car using her laptop and a data stick.

“You just accept this as a given right in New Zealand. Everything relies on the internet. My 14 year old is always cursing and he just wants to move into town. There are just some basics you take for granted now and one of those is fast internet access.”

If Fairton was miles away from Ashburton, Ms Geddes said she could understand the connectivity issues, but when there were more than 1800 people living within five kilometres of Ashburton it was appalling that  the village appeared to be off the fibre optic cable map.

“It’s ridiculous, Ashburton is getting more of what it’s already got and we’re getting nothing.”She’s explored every other option but said like others in Fairton she’s left paying big money whichever option she chooses. For her it’s a broadband wireless data stick.

Another resident described the data sticks as just one step up from dial up – “you can’t do any work on it, it’s just a word processor, for email and for looking at the internet”.

Last week Chorus came under fire from Ashburton business owners who said duplicating fibre optic cable was a waste of taxpayers’ money.

At that time Chorus media manager Robin Kelly said that as the Crown’s partner it was building Ashburton’s cable network. He defended the duplication by saying the company had built up its 40 kilometre nework in Ashburton over a number of years and while it was committed to minimising overbuild. It was also committed to delivering ultra fast broadband to areas where other networks did not meet commitments in terms of spend, open access and price, he said.

Electricity Ashburton has spent around $1 million installing fibre-optic cable in Ashburton’s central business district. About 200 customers are connected with numbers increasing daily. It has also undertaken an extensive rural fibre optic cable roll out to service its own electricity network as well as rural schools.

While the Fairton cable could only be accessed by people living in its immediate vicinity, Electricity Ashburton’s chief executive Gordon Guthrie said the company was looking at other options to connect a wider footprint in Fairton. It does not have a set timeframe for improving Fairton’s connectivity, however.