increase font size
Federated Farmers vice-president Andrew Hoggard.
Communications and Digital Media Minister Clare Curran was scheduled to meet with Federated Farmers last week to discuss the rollout of rural broadband.
This follows Federated Farmers vice-president Andrew Hoggard saying that dealing with woeful rural-broadband coverage should not be delayed while the Government pursues the roll-out of 5G cellphone technology.
Spark and Vodafone have been reported as saying they are trialling 5G -- the next generation of digital communications.
“Meanwhile plenty of towns and the provincial hinterland are without broadband, and with patchy or non-existent mobile coverage,” Hoggard says.
However Curran told Dairy News she expects to say more about rural broadband and 5G projects over the coming months.
“Absolutely everyone should share in the benefits of new technology and we need to be improving rural access and pushing for the best technology available, and we are doing exactly that,” she says.
“The Government is prioritising rural communities as it recognises their contribution to our nation.”
She was to meet with the Feds last Thursday.
“The Rural Broadband Initiative 2 (RBI2) work is progressing in parallel with the 5G work; it’s not either-or and I want the pace of that work to increase as much as is possible.
Hoggard says when there is poor or no access to ultra-fast broadband and mobile, farming businesses and family life suffer.
Federated Farmers is celebrating following the Government's announcement that young farmers will be able to use their KiwiSaver funds to buy their first home or farm.
Associate Agriculture Minister and Manawatu dairy farmer Andrew Hoggard says the free trade agreement (FTA) negotiated with India is not a bad deal and his party, Act, will support it when it goes before Parliament.
OPINION: The euphoria over the Government’s two new bills to replace the broken Resource Management Act is over.
Canterbury arable farmers are down by tens of millions of dollars after a rollercoaster of wild changeable January weather saw harvests delayed and some crops destroyed by violent hailstorms.
OPINION: 2025 was a big year for rural New Zealand in terms of policy.
OPINION: "We are back to where we were a year ago," according to a leading banking analyst in the UK, referring to US president Donald Trump's latest imposition of a global 10% tariff on all exports into the US.
DairyNZ says the Government’s proposed Resource Management Act reform needs further work to ensure it delivers on its intent.
Overseas Trade Minister Todd McClay says he's working constructively with the Labour Party in the hope they will endorse the free trade agreement (FTA) with India when the agreement comes before Parliament for ratification.
Donald Trump's latest tariff tantrum has again thrown the world of trade into a new round of turmoil and uncertainty, and NZ is caught up in it.
The third edition of the NZ Dairy Expo, held in mid-February in Matamata, has shown that the KISS principle (keep it simple stupid) was getting a positive response from exhibitors and visitors alike.
Twenty years ago, South African dairy farm manager Louis Vandenberg was sent to a farm in Waikato to provide training on Afimilk technology.
OPINION: Expect the Indian free trade deal to feature strongly in the election campaign.
OPINION: One of the world's largest ice cream makers, Nestlé, is going cold on the viability of making the dessert.
