Open Toaster by Roger Lancefield

My toaster at home

I use my toaster at home.  I’m on the Genesis Energy network.    My toaster only works with the Genesis Energy network.  It cost me 2 cents to make some toast.

My toaster around New Zealand

I took my toaster with me, when I flew to Auckland to visit my sister.   Genesis Energy aren’t in Auckland.

I travel quite a lot around New Zealand and toaster coverage is a real issue for me.   Why can’t I plug my toaster into the other networks?

I had to borrow my sister’s toaster.  It cost her 2 cents to make my toast.

I think I need a Mercury Energy toaster, because they seem to have more coverage, particularly in Auckland.

Unfortunately the strength of their service in my home town is quite poor – it takes ages for my toast to cook.  Plus my existing toaster plan offers free toasting on the weekends.

I think the answer is that I need two toasters.

My toaster overseas

I took my toaster on holiday to Australia.   Genesis Energy activated toaster roaming for me.

When I got off  the plane, I really needed some toast.  I plugged it into the nearest power point.   It cost me $7.50 to make some toast.  WTF, thats 375 times as much as at home?

The Serious Point

Why can’t we have mobile phone networks that work like electricity networks?

The findings of a Finnish study (Marilanta and Rouvinen, 2006) suggested the potential for productivity gains from technologies as:

• portability +32%
• wireless connectivity +6%

If we can improve wireless connectivity for portable devices then we can reduce costs and increase productivity (because people will use their “toasters” more often).

Capture

Business Card Reader app

Instant business card recognition right on your iPhone 3GS!

Business Card Reader by SHAPE Service GmbH exploits the 3-megapixel camera technology on your iPhone 3GS to deliver instant business card recognition.

The camera on older iPhone models (iPhone 2G or 3G) doesn’t have sufficient resolution.  You will need a macro lens attachment, such as Griffin Clarifi,  to improve photo quality.

Photograph the business card

Business Card Reader allows you to take a photo then “reads” it using text recognition technology.

The text recognition requires a good quality photo to do its job.

The iPhone must be correctly aligned with the business card – the app capture screen shows “This Side Up”.

The business card should be in sunlight or a bright light.  A business card with poor contrast will cause problems.

Ideally the the card should completely fill the screen without appearing out-of-focus.

Once you take the photo, there is a Preview screen, so you can simply Retake the photo if necessary.  When you are satisfied, Use starts the text recognition

App scans the text

Text Recognition

The text recognition scans down the image from 0-100%.

New Contact

Text is extracted and displayed in a ‘New Contact’ form, which you can edit.

OCR text for New Contact

In my trial the app correctly identified Mobile number, Work Fax number, Main number, Website URL  and Email Address with ease.

It recognised the address as a block of text, which required a little cutting/pasting to move text into the right sections into Postcode and Town.   It is still faster than manual retyping all the information from the business card.

The app also offers the convenient option of doing an immediate LinkedIn Lookup for the Name.

Broadband increases productivity, faster broadband does not

A recent New Zealand study (Grimes, Ren and Stevens, 2009) found that broadband adoption boosts productivity BUT no productivity differences were found with different speeds of broadband.  That finding is a surprise because faster internet access is often touted as a productivity-enhancing factor for businesses.

This study highlighted for me,  the need for rigorous research to quantify the benefits from investing in different forms of ICT.   It also led me to a Finnish study (Marilanta and Rouvinen, 2006) which evaluated the use of different types of “readily accessible technology” (laptops, data processing and  storage devices networked with wireless capability) at the business firm level.

New technology in conjunction with older technologies can increase productivity

The Finnish study has some important productivity principles about technology, which I paraphrase below:

1. a technology does not boost productivity – it  possesses characteristics that do,
2. a technology may be seen as a bundle of its characteristics, each having a separate productivity effect
3. a technology may possess many characteristics and many of them are shared, and
4. a technology used in conjunction with others may possess characteristics different from the same technology used separately.

“Even though diminishing returns on ICT occur as its usage expands, it is possible that new characteristics added to old technologies and new technologies working in conjunction with older ones may continuously shift the productivity frontier.”

What ICT investment will most increase your productivity?

The Finnish study found that businesses who use computers and networks already achieve the following productivity increases:

• processing and storage capabilities, +9%
• wired connectivity +14%

Their findings also suggest the potential for productivity gains in less common technologies:

• portability +32%
• wireless connectivity +6%

Their research was carried out several years ago now, when wireless was in its infancy.  Perhaps this explains why smartphones are defying the worldwide economic recession.

Are NZ businesses thinking about new ways of doing things / new opportunities – or are they just swapping 1 word processor with another 1? Research seems to indicate the latter, http://motu-www.motu.org.nz/wpapers/09_15.pdf , faster broadband does not mean greater productivity.

Diesel technology

Many people I talk to find it surprising that I scan all technology news, not just Information and Communication technology news.

I believe that we need to give the word “Technology” more importance.

It is common these days, to hear that we must use Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to increase our country’s productivity.   It’s important enough that we have a Minister of Communications and Information Technology.   I agree that we can become more productive by using technology to handle information and communications.

However, technology has a broader concept.  Wikipedia defines technology as “that [which] deals with human as well as other animal species’ usage and knowledge of tools and crafts, and how it affects a species’ ability to control and adapt to its environment.“

We take “Technology” too much for granted, and we need to give it more importance.  We have a Minister responsible for Research, Science & Technology.    A Wordle analysis of the MoRST Statement of Intent suggests “Technology” has a lower emphasis.

Large organisations understand this.  They often have a Chief Technology Officer (CTO) responsible for assessing any new and emerging technologies that can improve their business.  For example, an airport CTO will care about ICT, but they will also care about escalator technology and baggage handling technology.

Small organisations should understand this, but often don’t.  Poor technology investment decisions can add up to thousands of dollars a year of lost productivity and increased expenses.

Here are a couple of non-ICT examples, to get you thinking about how technology can make your business more productive:

By my estimates, it will cost you $90 to fill a diesel car; whereas it is only $76 to fill a petrol car.   But a diesel car goes significantly futher than a petrol car; therefore it costs 27% less for a diesel car to travel the same distance.  There are other  benefits related to productivity, such as less labour costs involved in fueling vehicles or processing fuel transactions; less frequent downtime for service due to longer service intervals.

Why don’t we see greater uptake of diesel technology?

Hand Dryer Technology

Everyone has to dry their hands!  Do you use a paper towel or a hand dryer?

Hand dryers are a much better option for public toilets than paper towels.   They eliminate the associated labour costs for ordering, storing, replenishing dispensers, collecting and disposing of paper towels.   That saving can translate into thousands of dollars a year, in larger public facilities like schools.

Most users will usually opt for the paper towel, because hand dryers usually take 30-45 seconds to dry hands and often don’t do a complete job.   I suggest that the problem isn’t the technology, but the choice of hand dryer.  Properly designed hand dryers, such as the Xlerator Dryer or Dyson Air Blade are upto is 3 times faster (10-15 seconds) than conventional hand dryers, and consequently use 80% less energy.

A more effective hand dryer technology implementation can increase user productivity. 

Don’t limit yourself to information technology – use TECHNOLOGY to increase our country’s productivity.

I recently amplified an article that proved speeding up websites improves your business.   This has also been extensively reviewed in the O’Reilly Radar – Velocity and the Bottom Line.

Bing (the search engine) found that a 2 second slowdown changed queries/user by -1.8% and decreased revenue/user by -4.3%.  Some of the conclusions from a joint presentation by Google / Bing researchers include:

• “Speed matters” is not just lip service
• Delays under half a second impact business metrics
• The cost of delay increases over time and persists  (ie even after you remove the delay)

As a case in point, visit Trademe, Telstraclear, Stuff or NZ Herald.  All of them in the top 10 visited websites in New Zealand.  Do you notice a delay for secure-nz.imrworldwide.com as the page loads?  Its one that often appears for me, while I wait for the page to load (so often in fact, that I wrote it down).   Ironically it belongs to Nielsen Net Rating.

The key point here, is that it may not be your website causing the problem.  If your website retrieves external objects from other sites, there is often a delay.

As we move more services into the cloud, it is important that someone care about the overall user experience; not just having each provider doing their best.

Having thought about the Treasury briefing for a week or so, I now realise that something was missing.   That something was an explanation of how Treasury thinks their project fits into their bigger picture of how they think government works.

You can see what I mean, in the following diagram, adapted from S.L.Hodgkinson, “The Role of the Corporate IT Function in the Federal IT Organization” (1996) .   The talk showed no comprehension of the “Federated” concept.  Instead we are still talking in terms of “Centralised” and “Decentralised”.  The 1980s reform moved us towards the “Decentralised” model, and now the economic crisis starts the pendulum swing back the other way.

The Role of the Corporate Function in the Federal Organisation

The diagram came about as part of my work for the State Services Commission, on a Government Federated Enterprise Architecture.   Our work closely followed similar government enterprise architecture  initiatives in the US, UK, Canada and Australia.  They are focussed on:

• Providing a common language for agencies involved in the delivery of cross-agency services;
• Supporting the identification of duplicate, re-usable and sharable services;
• Providing a basis for the objective review of investment by government; and
• Enabling more cost-effective and timely delivery of services through a repository of standards, principles and templates that assist in the design and delivery of capability and, in turn, business services to citizens.

As an interesting side note – look who runs the government enterprise architecture initiatives:

• US – Office of Management and Budget
• Canada – Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat
• Australia – Department of Finance and Deregulation

I hope that the Treasury picks up on this previous work done by the State Services Commission, and starts to include discussion of federated architecture.   Our work had already gone further than other jurisdictions, by using previous NZ e-government initiatives (SONZ, FONZ) and had identified the need for performance measurement and benchmarking.

Paradox

The New Zealand  Treasury  is exploring opportunities with vendors,  to improve efficiencies in the administration and support services of the state sector.  The forums have been widely reported in the media.

The evidence from the private sector and from other jurisdictions indicates that it is possible to improve the quality, and reduce the cost, of administrative and support services through common processes and systems and by leveraging knowledge and service volumes through such things as shared services centres and centres of expertise.

In real life, we can see proof of this with our mail.   In effect, there is a standardised outsourced mail process for delivering mail from point-to-point.  We don’t have IRD-Mail, MSD-Mail – we have NZ Post.   Yes there are other mail providers, but they are also commodity services and everyone’s processes are based on that assumption.

The challenges in changing  non-standardised non-outsourced back-office services in the State Sector  should not be underestimated.    Based on what I have seen over the last 9 years, here are some of the paradoxes that will need to be resolved:

Return on Investment Paradox

In my opinion, agencies don’t drop a perfectly good service they understand for a new service offering, unless there are significant advantages.    I also made this point in “Why Open Office is So Yesterday“.  Agencies will typically consider a new service as part of their “refresh” cycle, or when they are making a budget bid for a new system.   Opportunities to refresh larger systems may occur only every 10-15 years.

Provider: The shared service I build will only have gradual uptake because users already have their own service.
Agency: I will not use a shared service immediately, because I have already invested in my own service.

Timing Paradox

The Return on Investment paradox creates the Timing paradox.

Provider: There’s little point in offering a shared service because everyone already has their own service.
Agency: I have to build my own service, because there is no shared service available.

Urgency Paradox

Closely related to the Timing Paradox.

Provider: I should make my service shareable but it is a low priority for me.
Agency: I really need the service soon, if it doesn’t exist then I’ll have to build it.

Accountability Paradox

Sharing a centre of excellence in another government agency is difficult because of this paradox.  Getting the service cost right is important too.  If the service agency overcharges for the service, they are using their customers to subsidise operations; undercharge and the service agency is subsidising its customers.

Provider: I’m an agency not a service provider, you can share my service on an “all care, no responsibility” basis.
Agency: I have to build my own service, because I am ultimately accountable.

Service Maturity Paradox

To understand the advantages of a service being offered, you need to understand your own agency services and be able to benchmark them against best practice.  This is a key feature of productivity improvement, that is outlined in the Treasury briefing.

Provider: I have a good service that I can offer you.

Agency: I don’t understand my service, so don’t know if yours is any better; I don’t understand your concept of “good”.

Uniqueness Paradox

Depending on the service maturity of an agency, they may consider that everything they do is “special”.

Provider: I will build a service and share it.
Agency: I have to build my own service, because I do things differently.

Slow Movers Paradox

Government agencies are risk-adverse – there are little incentives in going first.  The Government Shared Network experience has probably made early-adopters reluctant to go first again; and made those who hung back, feel justified in hanging back further.

Provider: I need customers immediately otherwise I can’t cover the costs of building a shared service.
Agency: I will wait until someone else uses it, and see what happens.

Ignorance Paradox

Provider: “Build it and they will come”
Agency: I have to build my own service because no one else has what I need.

Efficiency Paradox

Provider: Become efficient and effective
Agency: I am efficient and effective (in my silo/sector); or, I don’t measure my service.

As the title of my blog suggests, implementing shared services in government is likely to be a Sisyphean Challenge.   What other paradoxes have you encountered?

*Acknowledgement to Laurence Millar’s GOVIS presentation “The Sisyphean Challenge of Transforming Government” for the title of this blog

Slide 5

•I have to build my own service, because there is no shared service available

1. About the forum

A Treasury vendor briefing on 25th September 2009 has started to generate some media interest and speculation in various popular blogs.  I attended the briefing and share my perspective as a former public servant experienced in running e-government vendor consultations.

I have broken it into three sections:

1. About the forum;
2. About the project under consideration
3. The future

The forum was for vendors interested in providing the Treasury with management and technology consulting services.

According to the advertised notice on the Government Electronic Tenders Service (GETS), its purpose was to indicate Treasury’s requirements in relation to benchmarking and the preparation of a business case to support a whole of government initiative.   It was run by the State Sector Productivity team of the Treasury.  The forum was poorly administered, with no RSVPs.  Consequently the room overflowed and there weren’t enough seats.  Treasury is running a second forum on 2nd October 2009, to cater for the overflow.

At the forum, the stated purpose was:

• To brief vendors about the work and priorities of the (new) state sector productivity team
• To indicate potential future requirements for vendor support for one project under consideration: Administrative and Support Services Optimisation
• To request early vendor technical input – i.e. during their project definition stage

The team indicated they were at the EARLY STAGES of project definition.  The information they were providing was subject to change.  They were anticipating benefits to Treasury and vendors by sharing information early.

The dialogue at the forum created unnecessary “noise” for several reasons:

1. Vendors were asked not to engage with their government clients about the presentation because the team was still engaging with other stakeholders.  This was a surprise to those attending – the GETS notice had no indication that it was a closed briefing, and there was no requirement to sign a non-disclosure agreement.
2. The team suggested a preference for a single large provider, who could demonstrate a solution that had been implemented with another government.  This meant many New Zealand companies in the room felt excluded.  My impression was the team strongly resisted any feedback from participants that there might be another way – and suggested they go away and “partner up”.

My perspective:

Commentators should note that generally central agencies are not experienced in running vendor consultations — their main focus is government agencies.  I can remember when the e-government programme started at the State Services Commission, it took several years to build its consultation techniques and processes.   Most of that expertise has now been transferred to Department of Internal Affairs (DIA/GTS) or lost through restructuring.

The team appeared to have given no thought about how to engage/collaborate with stakeholders in an on-going basis.  I suspect that vendors have become accustomed to Government 2.0-style consultation, so were surprised by this.  In the mean time, someone from at the meeting has established a LinkedIn group, NZAS.

The team should be congratulated for consulting with industry early.  Hopefully over the next few weeks, there will be clarification of their intentions.  I hope that their proposed approach can be debated, because there are other options, perhaps more suitable for the New Zealand context.

I can only hope that this “noise” does not detract from the proposed Administrative and Support Services (ASS) Optimisation project, which I strongly support.

2. About the project

Administrative and Support Services are things such as:

• Finance
• Human Resources
• Information Technology
• Procurement / supply chain management
• Executive and corporate services

The project is based on the overall assertion that “Significant productivity gains can be made through operational improvement”.   The private sector has seen productivity gains of upto 2%, mainly as a result of improving operations with new technologies.  In comparison public sector productivity is flat or down.  McKinsey & Company estimates potential public sector productivity gains of up to 15% in the next 10 years, by closing the private sector-public sector productivity gap.

According to the UK Cabinet Office: Experience from the private sector shows that typically corporate shared services can deliver efficiencies of between 20% and 50%.

The opportunities in New Zealand are probably as great, but we start from a position of  little knowledge.  The NZ State Sector Act gave Chief Executives greater control in managing their organisations.  The emphasis moved from “managing inputs” to “managing outputs”.   Therefore lack of external reporting of service costs and performance makes it difficult to draw precise quantitative conclusions re potential gains, i.e. we don’t have a common code of accounts, so we can’t compare back office costs in each department.

This proposed project is about more than shared services.    Read some of the UK public sector reports, such as Gershon (2004) and Varney (2006), to see how optimisation includes:

• Sstandardised processes and common systems
• Automation and self-service
• Measurement, management, control and continuous improvement
• Leveraging knowledge and service volumes through
  • business process outsourcing
  • shared services
  • centres of expertise

You can also view my GOVIS 2009 presentation, where I build on the UK ideas further.  (Note: This presentation was “ideas”, it was not official policy).

My perspective:

Get in behind it.  This project is a low-hanging opportunity to potentially save a lot of money.   NZ State Sector back office processes should be as good as the rest of New Zealand, if not the world.  Don’t bag the public service for not doing this already – how many NZ companies do this?

Based on my previous e-government experience; consider the New Zealand context.   If necessary, don’t be afraid to design unique solutions, such as we did with SEEMail (the government’s internal secure email system) and igovt (our award winning online identity verification system).   My most favourite example of this is the international e-government measure of “can your taxpayers file their tax return online?”.  In New Zealand for wage earners, we no longer have tax returns (we stopped the process).

3. The Future

Like any efficiency project, any savings are ongoing,  but further savings are unlikely unless new technology comes along.

We must remember not only to “save money with back-office government processes” but to  “increase the value of front-end government processes”.    I raised this point at the briefing, government plays a big part in many value chains.  The greatest potential value  lies in new investments in systems that enhance New Zealand value chains.  But that’s a future blog topic. 

Is it about productivity?

A Computerworld article reported that the New Zealand Open Source Society is launching a project to demonstrate the viability of free open source software on public sector desktops.

I have no evangelical interest in operating system or office productivity suite brands, but I think it is interesting to mull over what strategic question the project is going to address.

In the old days (1980s) , I was an IT manager faced with a difficult decision.  My organisation used a mixture of electric typewriters and proprietary Wang word processors.   Personal computers were becoming affordable and it was time to make a strategic decision:

“Should I use MS-Word or Wordperfect?”

In the 1990s, I  had to buy an office productivity suite, including a word processor, spreadsheet and presentation applications.  The strategic decision became:

“Should I use MS-Office, Lotus Notes or Novell Groupwise?”

The decision had become easier, because my organisation had built on  its existing investment, by developing additional support resources such as templates, policies and training.  I had to consider how I could continue to access the increasing archive of legacy information.   The software providers were starting to release new versions on a regular basis.  It was a large amount of work, just to cope with transitioning between different versions, provided by the same provider.

Swapping to a different software package would increase my transition costs, because I would have to redo all my supporting resources.   I would have to consider how to access my legacy information.

There is no research that I am aware of, that suggests swapping office productivity suites results in significant increased productivity.

Is it about saving money?

In early 2000s, there was mutterings of a new initiative by Sun, called Open Office.  Open source advocates started trying to make the case for open source on the desktop.

“Should I use Open Office to save money?”

If I had been making a new investment (such as in the 1980s), then it was worth considering.  However my legacy resources and information made that difficult.   Swapping to a different provider would increase my transition costs, because I would have to redo all my supporting resources.

In the late 2000s, I felt an increasing resistance to continual upgrades.  There was sufficient functionality in the existing office productivity suite; for many users it was too complicated.  My organisation looked to maximise their investment, by using the software as long as possible.  I wasn’t going to upgrade, there was no money being spent, therefore how could Open Office save money?

So what are the strategic questions that need to be addressed?

There are three related strategic questions I am thinking about.

1. How do I store my information in an open format?

Legacy information in proprietary formats influences my strategic decisions.  An open format would widen my potential options.  I also need to think more broadly about open formats for information, since the future is real-time streaming information, no longer conveniently packaged as pages.

Based on my experience with standards implementation (or failure thereof), I would like a test suite made available by some third party such as the NZ Open Source Society.  This will allow software vendors to test their products and my organisation to do acceptance testing.

I would encourage my peers to adopt ODF as the standard document format.   Standards New Zealand has already done the consultation.  This topic was hotly debated in 2007, when OOXML was proposed as an international standard.  Standards New Zealand disapproved with the decision to ratify OOXML – therefore we should all use ODF.

2. How do I make best use of my information?

Collecting, cleaning and storing information is an expensive investment.  The investment is fulfilled when the right information is put in front of a decision maker, at the right time, in the right way.

Many organisations feel email and websites have created “information overload“.  They are choose to ignore or block other information channels, such as texts, social media and instant messaging.  Arguably their issue is  “organization underload” -  decision makers can’t discern how to use it well in the constrained form it is presented to them.

Strategically how will I adopt multiple new information channels seamlessly into my information system?

3. How do I process my information?

Broadband means that Software as a Service (SaaS) is now a viable option, as office productivity suites move into the cloud.

Cloud  computing can save money.  Information in the cloud is potentially accessible from anywhere on the Internet, offering productivity gains from remote access and increased collaboration.

Strategically, cloud computing has great potential, but I need to understand the risks and opportunities.

We have certainly come a long way from my 1980s ICT environment!!

A final word

And hence the title of this blog – “Open Office is so yesterday”.  A project looking at the viability of free open source software on public sector desktops does not seem strategic to me.  It would have been strategic in the 1990s.

There is an open source office productivity suite for the cloud, called OpenGoo.  But the very nature of the cloud computing paradigm makes the questions of “which operating system” and “which office productivity suite” less relevant.

I should only care that you and I can both collaborate on the same information, each of us using our preferred toolset.

The first step

There has been a lot of publicity this week, about the New Zealand government’s broadband decision.  Broadband is good, for all the reasons said before.

“The future of broadband is in fibre, and taking it right to the home will bring significant gains for productivity, innovation and global reach.”
– Communications and Information Technology Minister Hon Steven Joyce

I believe fibre broadband is the first step on a journey, not the final goal.   More awareness needs to be raised of the second step, mobile broadband to enable mobile Internet access.

Mobile devices increase productivity

Remember when mobile phones came to New Zealand?   They changed the way that we did business.   If you didn’t have a mobile phone, you were at a disadvantage to your competitors.

It’s probably stating the obvious, but mobile devices increase productivity.  It increases the productivity of the businessman travelling away from the office; the parent volunteering at a school; the people waiting to be selected for a jury; and the fan at a sports event.

You can receive information while on the move and make an immediate decision.   You can work while away from the office or home.

The Internet is going mobile

Smartphones are the next evolution in mobile devices.  They are already changing  the way that people access the Internet.

• A recent US survey showed that 58.2% of total smartphone owners accessed news and information on their phones, compared to 13.1%  of the overall mobile phone market.

• Mobile Internet adoption will grow to 39%  in Western Europe in 2014, from 13%  in 2008, according to a Forrester report.

Why then, are we not talking about the issues surrounding mobile Internet access?  If you wait until you get back to the office, you will have lost the opportunity to the US or Europe.

Issues surrounding Mobile Internet in New Zealand

• Geography and Population:  New Zealand’s geography and its small population means  it is expensive to achieve 100% coverage.

• Business Models: The common business model involves a service provider installing infrastructure, and then convincing a customer to buy their exclusive service.    The NZ consumer faces a fragmented market of commercial WiFi hotspots in hotels, cafes and shops – each with their own registration and payment screens.  The casual daily price is often a barrier to the decision to use.

• Organisations: Many organisations do not offer WiFi as a courtesy, because they view it as an expense.    If they choose to provide it, they will often outsource it.  The service provider they use, will often see it as a business opportunity.

• Laws: Legislation aimed at tackling illegal use of wireless Internet connections can hinder attempts to increase mobile broadband access.   People may not provide access because they are concerned about liability.

A potential future

Wouldn’t it be great, if I could turn on my smartphone or laptop, connect to a wireless signal, and be billed on my monthly account, by my ISP or telco.   Wouldn’t it be great, if organisations that require me to wait on their premises, provided this wireless signal?

What was a cost on my time, could become an opportunity to do something useful.  It would totally change my perception of them.

How might we achieve this?

A recent article about Vodafone UK said that they have just launched an in-the-home  femtocell service.

A femtocell plugs into a customer’s broadband connection and extends wireless coverage.  They are typically used in areas where access would otherwise be limited or unavailable.

The Vodafone business model has  controversy about customers paying for their own infrastructure.  Also it is an exclusive arrangement.  If you’re a Telecom customer, you can’t use it.   Even if you’re aVodafone customer  next door, you can’t use it.

I suggest we think about a concept that very similar to the government’s stated objective: Government investment will be directed to an open access, wholesale-only, passive fibre network infrastructure.

How can we build a public 3G/wifi  femtocell network?

Disclosure:  I have been involved in the promotion of free wifi in New Zealand, as part of TheFreeNet.