By Dylan Moran
Stephen Fry says he has "stirred up a hornet's nest" after sharing his thoughts on the poor performance of New Zealand broadband on Twitter.
The British actor and comedian is currently in the country working on Peter Jackson's Hobbit movies.
While his frustrating experience with slow internet speeds came down to Fry exceeding his data cap, the comments have stuck and Telecommunications Users Association of New Zealand chief executive Paul Brislen agrees with the sentiments.
“One of the things we really suffer with in New Zealand is a very low upload speed, so he would have been really stuck, trying to do what we all want to do – send things around the internet – using last year’s technology.”
Mr Brislen says Fry is one of New Zealand’s "biggest supporters", so his comments have extra gravitas.
“To have somebody like that with 4 million followers come out and say, ‘By the way, the broadband’s awful,’ that’s a huge impact, particularly on our tourism sector."
Mr Brislen says Communications Minister Steven Joyce’s attempts to defend New Zealand’s infrastructure after Fry’s remarks are justified as changes are being made. He labelled the criticism, which has come as the Government starts to enact those changes, ‘unfortunate’.
“The affordability of it is very good […] it’s on par with what you pay today, but you’ll double your speed,” he says.
Mr Brislen says it will take around a decade to roll out the new scheme across the country –leaving Fry with plenty of time for another tirade on New Zealand’s behalf.
3 News
source: newshub archive
