Great to see you back in my home town Dave. And yes, I am equally frustrated by the challenges of internet access in NZ, which you may know has been the subject of intense debate recently in the NZ press with a new Telecom CEO, etc.

I wonder if you have any of my old colleagues / friends in your course. My last connections there were with Jane McCann of Navigate and Ian Brooks of Christchurch (and NTL).

I think you will find that open and free WiFi is available at most service (gas) stations and McDonnells (and other similar places) here -- at least in WA. A car in the parking bay works well if you think the food might be a little underwhelming. I also understand that a section of the Perth CBD has it now -- or will soon have.

Thanks Russell, but it does not really solve my problem here in little old Sandringham, Auckland.

Sorry - but this broadban- cost issue does peeve me.

I am a Master of Wine and part of being an MW is that I have to have students to mentor. Unfortunately, the Institute in London has assigned me a student in Tokyo and a student in the South of France. The student in the South of France wants to Skype me. I had to explain that a) Paul's wine consultancy business is doing so poorly that he can not afford an upgrade in computing power and the other hardware necessary for Skype, b) my home internet access (the one that I am trying to type this post on) is so slow that it would never work and, c) worst of all, my IT department at work ALSO think broadband in Aotearoa / New Zealand is over priced, so their "solution" [a word that should always be in inverted commas] is to refuse to buy more bandwidth on principle AND discourage anyone from using Skype in the office [though they will pay the bills if we Skype somewhere else, like in a hotel a long way from Auckland...]

So I tell her... I am ashamed. Yes, my country thinks it is smart, yes, we want to be a technologically innovative country, yes Skype may be a good tool to use, but [well, I have some better Web 2.0 ones, I think, coming...] I just can't do it. And that hurts.

Dave - if you are reading this - I am feed up with talkback radio in this country (got stuck ina traffic jam this evening from Auckland airport coming back from your Wellington course) - just quickly, would you fire Graham Henry or keep him on? [I know, I know, this is coming from a league person, what do I know about rugby, etc etc etc...)

From a Welsh perspective Paul you can keep Graham Henry, we don't want him back ......
Also it will improve our changes of winning in 2011

You found the right people with Cafenet Dave.

The guy who started it inside Wellington City Council was Richard Naylor who turned me on to the net in the first place. If you haven't run into him, find a way to do it.

As an ex-IT manager of many years I tried earlier this year to get to use SKYPE via work to connect with systems seminars and groups spanning the globe -- but mainly in the UK. No go! I argued (as one does when one knows the truth at a deep technical level) but gave up when they advised that I could use the phone system for 9 cents per call to anywhere (no time limits but not to mobile). It is possible through a contract deal done with Telco for digital phones. My son is now in Vancouver and we use SKYP to link up every few weeks for a 10-15 min chat with video. The latest version of SKYP really works well (the earlier one had a little bit of a delay and sync problem with audio and picture). We've had group link ups with UK-SA-Belgium-Aust which went well once there is a 'talking stick' protocol established. It also helps to have someone 'run' the meeting in the sense of coordinating content and another handling the occasional technology glitch which might require re-connect. As they say in soft-systems: "systemically desirable – culturally infeasible”