Rural Mobile Coverage Worse After 3G Shutdown, Survey Finds
Mobile phone coverage and reliability are deteriorating in rural areas, and farming families are bearing the cost, according to a Federated Farmers survey.
Rural internet suppliers have improved their time-of-day (TOD) performance over the last 12 months, now matching ADSL and VDSL in urban areas.
The internet speed monitoring company TrueNet says time-of-day variances on fixed wireless are worse than ADSL, but the actual speeds overall are faster.
TrueNet says TOD is a critical performance criterion and ISPs serving the rural sector have responded by matching standard connections with Rural Broadband Initiative (RBI) funded connections at 95% or better.
The company says fixed wireless is now a viable and successful technology in rural regions and places between ADSL and VDSL in performance.
“As fixed wireless gains in popularity it’s expected to suffer from some congestion as demand grows, so it’s good to see that the rural wireless speed has settled around 78% of best hour speed.”
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Canterbury milk processor Synlait has come through tough times and is now ready to scale up from a stable base, says its newly confirmed CEO Leon Fung.
NZPork says a ham made in New Zealand is not necessarily made from New Zealand pork.
Rural Contractors NZ says proposed changes to land transport rules for agricultural vehicles are a welcome response by the Government to out-of-date regulations which have seen members hit with huge fines.
With New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions in the spotlight, Auckland scientist Nathan Balasingham says there’s a better way to tackle the problem than shrinking cow numbers or fertiliser usage.

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