Common Framework for State Sector Broadband Demand Aggregation

The Common Framework for State Sector Broadband Aggregation defines government expectations of the commercial and technical principles that will underpin future procurement of high-speed broadband services.

The Common Framework principles are transferable to local government and the private sector. The principles promote wider community alignment when preparing demand-side strategies to support area-based broadband action plans.

Purpose

Government can play an important role in encouraging investment in new high-speed broadband1infrastructure through approaches that aggregate state sector demand within a common framework. This framework sets out the objectives in establishing a co-ordinated approach, and outlines the key principles to be followed by government agencies and sectors when procuring broadband services.

Objectives

  • To stimulate efficient investment in new high-speed broadband network infrastructure for the benefit of both government and the wider community.
  • Through the framework provide a greater degree of alignment across the state sector when purchasing high-speed broadband infrastructure.

Overarching Principles

  1. The state sector will use its position as a leading purchaser of high-speed broadband services to underpin demand aggregation strategies in order to share the associated infrastructure and service improvements with communities.
  2. Government agencies and sectors are free to implement independent ICT strategies appropriate to their requirements, but must seek to balance these with the competing requirements of area-based strategies aggregating demand from multiple sectors and consumers within a local geographic area.
  3. Transparency of demand is necessary to provide a basis for the assessment of commercially sound and sustainable high-speed broadband infrastructure investment. The open and transparent publication of state sector broadband demand represented geographically via an on-line map can be used by service providers or communities as a useful tool to assist in achieving this.
  4. State sector demand aggregation strategies will promote appropriate competitive market outcomes rather than reinforce the market position of major broadband service providers.

    5. Commercial and Technical Principles


  5. Preference will be shown for service providers who deliver high-speed broadband services over open access networks2,3, which encourage efficient investment in new high-speed network infrastructure.
  6. Preference will be shown for competitive high-speed broadband services which are NOT contractually and/or technically bundled with other service offerings, and can be contracted for separately.
  7. Contracts with service providers will allow for transparency of pricing and performance data within the state sector. This information will be used for the benchmarking of pricing and performance.
  8. Most favoured pricing will apply throughout the state sector, i.e. service providers must offer the same best price or service to any contracting state sector agency.
  9. Where service provider offerings are not well aligned with the Common Framework, contract periods will be for a minimum period with a maximum of up to 12 months.
  10. The interconnection of high-speed broadband networks will be facilitated through neutral points of presence or ‘meet me' points, where any similar network can connect to any other network. These ‘meet me' points will be located at the centre of geographic collections of users and networks.4
  11. High-speed broadband services will be easily expandable Ethernet services offering speeds from 5Mbit/s - 10Gbit/s. Preference is for connectivity which is symmetric, meaning the uplink and downlink speeds will be identical, and preference will be given to uncontested bandwidth.
  12. All high-speed broadband services must be flexible enough to meet and/or support a broad range of state sector requirements for performance, quality of service, availability and extensibility5.

Footnotes

 

  1. High-Speed Broadband is defined at a symmetrical Ethernet service that is easily expandable from 5Mbit/s to 10Gbit/s, the service can be used for private connectivity (i.e. WAN) or public (i.e. Internet) services. Note: there are some state sector requirements for local or national leased fibre optic circuits or optical wavelength paths.
  2. Open Access Network (OAN) refers to horizontally layered network architecture and a business model that separates physical access to the network from service provisioning. The same OAN will be used by a number of different service providers that share the investments and maintenance cost.
  3. First preference is for open access networks, the second tier of preference is for non-discriminatory access (i.e. access on the same terms and conditions for all service providers), and the third tier would be regulated access.
  4. It is estimated that between 20-30 neutral points of presence are require through out New Zealand.
  5. Extensibility in this context means the network infrastructure must be designed such that there are no artificial restrictions to expanding available suppliers, services, technologies, and con­nected agencies.