Connecting the unconnected 10% of New Zealanders by 2025: Is a MahiTahi approach possible?

The New Zealand Government has set the goals of having 99% of Kiwis able to access broadband with peak speeds of at least 50 Megabits per second (Mbps) by 2025, and with the remaining 1% able to access broadband with rates of at least 10 Mbps. There is an interesting question to be raised: is it possible to achieve these goals earlier? Inspired by the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SdGs), especially the SDG 17 of Partnerships for the goals, we propose bottom-up and top-down partnerships based on a sustainable research enlightened MahiTahi approach to pursue the New Zealand rural connectivity goals. In Maori, MahiTahi means “collaboration” which best represents the key design and implementation principles embedded into our approach. It aims to address the three dimensional challenges of rural connectivity including the collaboration among various network access technologies to advance geo-reachability; the collaboration among different stakeholders to optimize social and economic reachabilities, as well as the collaboration among national and international knowledge societies from multiple disciplines to maximize knowledge reachability. Rather than providing a final solution, this paper aims to inspire and invite wider discussions and dialogues to collaboratively seek out a timely holistic solution so as to assist the Government to achieve Her goals as earliest as possible.