How's your internet connection? Happy with its speed? Satisfied with its reliability? Has that old tyrant, distance, been vanquished by your computer?
If your answer to any of these questions is "no" then you may be a New Zealand internet user. The Internet, according to thousands of news stories and speeches, will do for 21st century New Zealand business what a ship with freezers managed to do for us a hundred years earlier. So why does it feel as though we're all still standing at the wharf, waiting?
Enter the clear thinking and highly accomplished internet businessman Rod Drury, with a plan. You can click here to read it. In four succinct pages he sets out a case for the people of New Zealand to set up a state-owned broadband fiber network, connecting all New Zealand cities, as well as a new high capacity undersea fiber cable to connect us to the world.
By his own admission, his politics lean to the more-market right, but in this case he judges that this vital infrastructure need is best met by the State. If you're one of the thousands of internet users whose Go Large experience has been just the latest in a string of disappointments, then you may well find yourself agreeing with him.