The wireless broadband service has been built up by a small Whangarei company, whose six staffers range in age from 24 to 19, and it has spread Kaipara wide after an initiative that started in the Tangowahine Valley.

Hugh Rose, who farms sheep and beef and runs Tangowahine Farm and Rural Retreat homestay, knew broadband was essential to his business.

An initial approach to national service provider, Telecom, secured an agreement that if $8,000 was forthcoming the local telephone exchange could be upgraded to accommodate landline broadband.

Then, the very next day, came the government’s ‘unbundling’ decision, opening up broadband to other providers, and Telecom dropped out of the picture.

Hugh said: "We were back to square one when a guest at our homestay, a telecommunications expert from America, volunteered to help out.

"He actually extended his planned stay with us and visited a number of computer companies in Whangarei. He came back with a shopping list of just one — a small IT service company called Uber PC.

"He said they ‘spoke the language’ so we invited the principal, Hayden Simon, to come and talk to us. In short, a number of neighbours signed up, and we built a receiving tower on a hill above the valley."

Uber PC had purchased bandwidth for its service from wholesaler, Kordia.

"Broadband in our remote valley had arrived. In the July storms, we lost the land line telephone as well as electricity. But with a generator we still had fast broadband, as well as a bonus — an excellent wireless telephone service."

Hayden Simon said: "Once the Tangowahine operation was up and running, news of it spread like wildfire by word of mouth.

"When we acquired our bandwidth, it was horrendously expensive so the obvious solution was to sell it onwards. UberNetworks was formed in 2005 with the purpose of being a quality internet service provider. The idea evolved from our primary IT business, Uber PC.

"We saw there was an absence of quality internet providers in the market. Many customers’ needs were not being met, and entire rural communities were going unserved. We felt that we could make things better and help people achieve what they wanted from their business and personal life."

Now repeater stations have spread the wireless broadband service out to Poutu Point on the North Kaipara Head and up to Omamari and the Waipoua Forest. A repeater station at Tinopai flicks the signal back into the harbour communities like Whakapirau, with further wireless signal relays in the pipleline.

"We are serving hundreds of customers — farms as well as businesses and individual users in Dargaville and other Kaipara towns — and growing very quickly," Hayden said.
"Once people get the service, they love it. We also have extensive back up and monitoring and we can tell when a customer goes off line for any reason before they might even be aware of the fact themselves.

"When we do get a call to say there is no connection, it’s normally because there’s been a power cut in their area." The most telling endorsement for a high speed broadband system that has grown out of a ‘do it yourself’ desire to meet a vital communications need, comes from project instigator, Hugh Rose:

"My wife, Pauline, is Strategic Communications manager for the Whangarei District Council, and she finds our broadband service here on the farm faster and better than the service in town."