The National Broadband Map was launched in November 2007 at the Digital Future Summit 2.0 as a public beta. It exists to comprehensively map broadband demand across the government sector and in conjunction with telecommunications operators to map broadband supply; initially high speed, symmetrical networks.
Since its launch we have been working behind the scenes on improving the application on a number of fronts. We identified we could improve and expand on the demand data, we identified we could improve and expand on the supply data and we identified ownership and management of demand data did not have to reside within the State Services Commission.
The map is currently under redevelopment and a public beta with limited functionality will be available at the start of next month. We already have a new map interface in place and we’re currently working on visualisation of the data. The development process is expected to be finished at the end of June but we’re running a pretty open development process so it’s going to be possible to see the application evolve over the next three months. You’ll see an incomplete application with limited functionality and we won’t be hiding the imperfections.
We’re following an agile development process with the new application which means we will be producing features and improvements in a usable working form on a regular basis. While not the reason for using agile development, it gives us the opportunity to let you see how the software is evolving as it is being developed rather than just presenting you with a finished product.
A quick summary of what the application is:
- A user focussed interactive map
- Maps broadband supply and demand in New Zealand
- An open source project licensed under the BSD license.
Over the course of the next couple of months we will try and communicate a number of things through these blog posts covering demand aggregation, the national broadband map and the process of developing a web application. We still have the original mapping application up and running at www.broadbandmap.govt.nz.
2 Comments
So what is the map actually of?
It seemed to be list of public places that use broadband or was there more to it that I didn’t get? For example if I click on the High Court in Wellington, I just get info on where it is. Nothing about broadband demand or supply.
On the supply side we are mapping network coverage so by selecting the ‘Network’ check box you can see network coverage, the broadband supply. This is represented as either lines or polygons.
On the demand side we’re identifying potential users of broadband across government, health and education and inviting organisations outside of this to identify and submit their demand. These sectors tend to be early and big users of broadband technologies. Internationally these sectors have been the key ‘anchor tenants’ on new networks and network extensions.