That is because the majority of us connect to our home broadband connection via a Wi-fi router, enjoying the convenience of having our devices untethered from the wall but constantly connected to the internet.

The vast range of hardware configurations, quirks of home design and size of our dwellings means Wi-fi network performance varies widely between broadband customers. It's for that reason that Vodafone this week introduced SuperWifi, a free offer to equip new and existing residential broadband customers on its Unlimited Broadband and Wireless Broadband 600GB plans with two mesh wifi devices to improve network connectivity in the home. 

Vodafone is so confident that the two DecoX20 devices set-up from networking hardware maker TP-Link will provide "wall-to-wall in-home Wi-fi coverage" that it is offering a $100 credit if it doesn't live up to that claim. The pair of devices would cost around $450 to buy from an electronics retailer.

Poor Wi-fi isn't just frustrating for broadband customers. It is a thorn in the side of internet providers who often face criticism for perceived poor service, when the real reason is beyond their control. As such, Vodafone's investment in SuperWifi is an effort to cut down on helpdesk queries and is in line with the company's recent push to improve its patchy track record on customer service.

The two Wi-Fi 6 compatible mesh devices resemble the Google Nest Wi-fi device that internet provider Orcon has been offering new customers of fibre plans. That package includes one mesh unit, while additional units can be rented for $5 per month.

The DecoX20 supplying my lounge with Wi-fi

Mesh is the way

Vodafone's provision of two mesh devices is attractive in comparison and set-up takes about 15 minutes, a similar amount of time to Google Nest Wi-fi installation. The two units replaced a Google Wi-fi network in my Wellington apartment offering comparable network performance. 

If the TP-Link devices have an edge, it is in the antivirus, parental controls and quality of service features built into the network and accessible from the Deco app that you use to set up the network.

Vodafone's chief consumer officer, Carolyn Luey, said that increased demand for reliable Wi-fi in the home as a result of increased remote working and stay at home orders of 2020, was behind the SuperWifi offer.

"Thick walls, building materials such as concrete and ceramic tiling, other electronic and wireless devices, mirrors and even the neighbours' networks can cause problems with Wi-Fi in the home," she said.

That's certainly true of my 86 sqm apartment, where a concrete-lined lift shaft created Wi-fi dead zones in my apartment when I relied solely on my top of the line Netgear router. The set of three Google Wifi mesh devices solved that problem. They work by creating a dedicated network within the apartment, sending traffic between each other to improve the signal coverage. 

Wall to wall guarantee

The TP-Link set-up appears to do the same job with a pair of devices. Vodafone suggests two DecoX20 devices are suitable for a "standard 1-3 bedroom home" but will send out a third device if a Vodafone technician deems it necessary.

With many Kiwis living in larger and more complex homes with sleep-outs, loft offices and garage workshops, it is yet to be seen how Vodafone's wall to wall coverage guarantee stacks up. Vodafone is undertaking to work with a customer for up to 30 days offering remote support, an additional mesh device and even a visit from a technician if required. If all else fails, the $100 credit will apply.

I can attest to the satisfaction of not having to worry about Wi-fi dead zones - having to stay in certain rooms to get a decent signal or seeing streaming video services buffering when the Wi-fi signal drops out. SuperWifi has the potential to improve the customer experience for broadband users on those Vodafone plans - and reinforces the virtues of investing in mesh Wi-fi devices for those on lower-tier plans and signed up with rival ISPs.

SuperWifi is available on a 12-month term. Fees apply if you cancel or transfer your plan or billing account within 24 months.

Find out more information about Vodafone's SuperWifi.

We don't generally comment much on these sorts of things for 2 reasons. Firstly, ITP is a broad church and it's outside the areas that we - as an organisation - generally take a position on. Secondly, TechBlog's editor Paul Brislen usually covers this pretty well!

But there's a hugely important principle at stake and I think our community, as the largest tech community in New Zealand, should be thinking about all of this very carefully.

Let's start by thinking about three fundamental questions:

1. What is the Internet?
2. Who owns it?
3. Who is responsible for regulating it?

At this point our Network Admins might start talking about networks and routers and central DNS servers etc etc etc, and that's certainly true from a technical or structural perspective. But the reality is, the Internet is more than this; in fact, no person, company, or government owns the Internet; As one website puts it, it's owned by humanity itself.

But increasingly, what geeks like us think of as "the Internet" differs more and more from what the public - especially the younger public who never saw that side - see it as. 

Some of us see ones and zeroes, some see infrastructure, and some see immense possibility - both commercially and socially. But for many (most?) people, the Internet means Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Twitter and Google. And maybe Netflix and a few others as well.

In short, the mindset has shifted as Internet access has become commoditised - just like we think of Electricity as the stuff that makes our devices and lights work (rather than the vast network of electricity generation and distribution), the Internet - for most people - has become what we do with it. And a huge part of that is on social media networks.

Now, if we accept that at least some regulation of "the Internet" is necessary to prevent the worst of humanity creating victims online, just as we expect Society's behaviour to be regulated to prevent people becoming victims offline, whose job is it to do so?

Putting aside some very significant jurisdictional challenges*, the answer has to be exactly the same as the offline world: the Government, via legally-formed laws and regulations.

Which raises a fairly crucial and fundamental conundrum.

Once a particular "service" such as Facebook has reached the point where it's basically part of the fabric of the Internet - and by extension, Society itself - as many of the services above have done, who is responsible for regulation of content?

To put it another way, we don't expect the power company to regulate what we do with electricity. We also don't expect "products and services" that use electricity to regulate our use - it would be daft to expect either the power company or heat-lamp providers, for example, to detect or prevent an individual setting up an illegal growing operation in their basement - or to cut off electricity because of it.

And it would certainly be daft for power companies or lines companies to start making up their own rules about what you can do with their power - over and above what's illegal or unsafe - and take action if you breach those rules. Quite rightly, there'd be a huge outcry.

Yet this is exactly what's happening - more and more - with "the Internet".

Let's take illegality out of the equation and accept that - arguably - mainstream social media and other companies have some sort of obligation to at least attempt to block illegal content. I'm sure somewhere in their terms and conditions the power company can cut you off is you use their power illegally as well.

It's not unreasonable to conclude that it's for the Government to regulate to the extent that content or behaviour is illegal regardless of whether it's online or offline. Unless you're an anarchist, that's a reasonable position to take and it's not too big a jump to then expect providers to have a role in preventing the publishing of content that is clearly illegal.

Some will argue with that, but let's put that aside for a moment and think about immoral, outrageous, offensive or unpopular - but not illegal - content.

Increasingly - and especially over the last few weeks since the brief occupation of the US Capitol building - social media companies like Twitter and Facebook have appointed themselves judge, jury and executioner on what content is acceptable on their platforms - both in "public" and "private" groups - and taken action against hundreds of thousands of people who have expressed views that differ from what they see as acceptable.

And there's that conundrum.

On one hand, it's their network so their rules. On the other, these companies have grown to the point that they're now a core part of the Internet itself - and their actions have a significant impact on everyone. They're now in a position to - and arguably do - shape public opinion by either shadow- or outright- banning views they don't approve of. 

Given the scale of these services, this means it's now up to a very small group of extremely rich and powerful unelected men (mostly) to decide what is acceptable speech and content for Society as a whole, above and beyond that deemed in law.

Surely we all have to agree that that's a problem.

And we're not just talking about speech. For example, these services have the proven ability to massively influence election outcomes and much more. At the other end of the spectrum, their algorithms can actively push content to you that research [pdf] suggests doesn't just shape opinion, but that can fully radicalise it. 

So what's the answer?

It surely has to be recognising that once a "service" reaches a large enough scale, their obligation has to at least partially expand from just their shareholders to society as a whole. And surely this has to include obligations around not censoring content and users except where content is explicitly illegal - as doing so infringes their right to free speech.

Secondly, as with every other facet of life, surely it should be solely up to Governments to deem what is illegal when it comes to speech and content.

Facebook especially has been calling for Governments to step up and devise rules around harmful content, a different model for platforms' legal liability and a "new type of regulator" to oversee enforcement. But so far, many Governments have shirked this responsibility in a way they never would in the offline world.

New Zealand, on the other hand, has been fairly proactive in this area and already has specific laws regarding harmful content online - primarily The Harmful Digital Communications Act 2015 - complete with 10 communications principles and an Approved Agency (Netsafe) who have a role resolving matters before they get to court. This law strikes a careful balance and focuses on an intent to cause harm and even includes a process for services to resolve complaints to the Agency about content.

Again jurisdiction* aside (and that's a massive aside), surely this - the law of the land - is what large social media networks should be following when it comes to policing content; rather than their own views? 

Should that not be an obligation, especially once a certain scale is reached (i.e. where their editorial decisions are impacting a significant?

This problem isn't going to go away, especially as more and more of "The Internet" falls into private hands. It's up to all of us to push for a solution that protects victims while ensuring fundamental rights are maintained. 

What do you think? Keen to read your views in the comments below.

* And yes, I appreciate jurisdiction is one of the biggest issues in this debate and I've conveniently skirted over it below. Personally, I think this is resolvable technically but either way, the article was already too long :). I'll address that in a future piece if there's interest.

The water is calm and warm, stingrays bask in the shallows and the beach resembles Bondi on a scorching Sydney day. There's hardly a spare patch of golden sand to throw your towel down on.

Kiwis have been making the most of their holidays, to the envy of northern hemisphere friends forced to endure the newsfeed photos of crowded bars and beaches, as they live with the surging virus. In Ireland where much of my extended family lives, the country's Covid Tracker app tells me that there were 3,955 cases of Covid-19 on January 14th and 28 deaths. That could be us.

The sense of nervousness that we have grown far too complacent about Covid-19 is growing.

"Stunned that not a single person going to the supermarket tonight was scanning the NZ COVID Tracer QR code. Not one," tweeted the Wellington-based Infometrics economist Brad Olsen yesterday. 

"I looked wildly out of place stopping to take 2 seconds to scan. Complacency has well and truly set in. Dangerous if there is an outbreak."

The plummeting use of the NZ COVID Tracer app for scanning into shops, restaurants and businesses will render digital contact tracing efforts ineffective, particularly if some of the new highly infectious variants of Covid-19 begin to circulate here.

"If any variants of the virus got out, never mind these more infectious ones, they would spread like wildfire," microbiologist Dr Siouxsie Wiles warned this week.

As BusinessDesk pointed out this week, it's not just laziness - there are digital divide issues limiting compliance, which is hard to quantify.

What's the answer? A relentless and effective public health campaign is underway, but in the absence of community transmission, we have become jaded. We have all of the digital tools other countries are using - a functional QR code-based app and the Apple/Google Bluetooth contact tracing feature. Dr Michelle 'Nanogirl' Dickinson even coached iPhone users on how to boot into the NZ COVID Tracer app with the mere tap of a finger on the pack of the phone, giving the 2-second access Olsen speaks of.

There's only one other digital trick we could and should try - Bluetooth beacons. Placed in retail outlets, they would automatically detect smartphones that come into contact with them and have Bluetooth enabled. It would basically take the effort out of signing in as it would be done automatically by proximity to a Bluetooth beacon.

The technology is being trialled in New Zealand on a small scale. Paperkite, the company behind the Rippl contact tracing app, is experimenting with beacons. But the infrastructure requirements are daunting - each business would need beacons strategically located around their premises to get the required coverage with Bluetooth only accurate up to 10 metres or so at best.

The search is on for a more accurate and easy to deploy technology. At its Tokyo headquarters, TDK is trialling VENUE a contact tracing system based on the geomagnetic sensor found in smartphones and used for location-based services. The sensor gives a location accurate to within a couple of metres and would communicate this info anonymously to an app on the phone. It would remove the need for adding wireless infrastructure to premises. The drawback is that for it to work properly, it would need an indoor layout map to be surveyed for each premise.

When an infected person is identified, everyone who was close to them in a shop or restaurant could be traced.

There's a risk that automating even further the process of digital contact tracing will just entrench the complacency. But we need to be prepared for the virus to be part of life for a long time to come and deploy every possible tool in the arsenal, including Covid Card type devices where people don't have smartphones, to ensure contact tracing efforts are sustainable. 

Cup drama runneth over

In a week where Team New Zealand escaped damage and injury in a capsize of its 75-foot monohull boat on the Auckland harbour, another drama emerged off the water centred on software.

Dunedin company Animation Research, headed by former ITP president (2014 - 2016) Sir Ian Taylor, who was knighted in the New Year's Honours, is in a copyright dispute with America's Cup sailing legend Sir Russell Coutts over the graphics used to deliver official TV coverage of the racing.

The Coutts-led companies Oracle Racing and F50 League LLC, trading as SailGP, claim they own the rights to aspects of the clever augmented reality system Animation Research is using. Sir Ian argues that Animation Research developed the technology for the America's Cup as far back as 1992 and was blindsided by the copyright claim which arrived on the 23rd of December.

It's not a dispute about the technology underlying the system, but a few specific details around how the information is displayed on screen, with SailGP laying claim to the format of defining the course perimeter, displaying sponsors logos and indicating the distance between boats.

Sir Ian is one of our most respected technology leaders and Animation Research one of our most innovative companies, so it is disappointing to see this flare-up now. Sir Russell may have a valid claim to intellectual property, but also a vested interest - he's not involved in this America's Cup, but a rival yachting format where the LiveLine augmented reality system SailGP has developed will no doubt be deployed.

That two of our most prominent and respected Kiwis can't sort this out with a conversation says so much about the fractious and competitive nature of the America's Cup. Sir Ian's team worked hard this week to reformat the graphics, which will debut for racing this afternoon. Here's hoping that puts the issue to bed and allows us to focus on the action on the water rather than bitter recriminations on the sidelines.

Jack was right, sort of

There has been much debate about the de-platforming of President Trump from Twitter and Facebook in the wake of the riot at the US Capitol building, allegedly incited by a speech Trump gave which was backed up with tweets to his 88 million followers.

As I wrote on BusinessDesk this week, I think Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey did the right thing in permanently banning Trump from the platform. Faced with a difficult decision, he opted for an excess of caution, hoping to minimise the risk of further riots, violence and deaths.

But did he and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg make those calls to block Trump for the right reasons? A new Democratic president will be in the White House in less than a week. It's easy to be cynical and suggest the two billionaire tech executives are playing to the new master, looking to endear themselves President-elect Biden and Democratic lawmakers and soften any regulatory changes that are coming.

That may be the case, but ultimately, I accept the explanation for the move Dorsey tweeted this week. 

"We faced an extraordinary and untenable circumstance, forcing us to focus all of our actions on public safety," he wrote 

"Offline harm as a result of online speech is demonstrably real, and what drives our policy and enforcement above all."

But he and his fellow executives running social media networks can't continue to be responsible for making such editorial calls. The US needs a digital regulator where the "super-spreaders", those with massive social media followings and influence, are scrutinised by an independent regulator, who decides if and when they are deplatformed. It needs to be open and transparent and subject to appeal. But it needs to happen soon in the US and be mirrored around the world.

Dorsey's answer to the problem, funnily enough, doesn't involve regulation.

"We are trying to do our part by funding an initiative around an open decentralized standard for social media. Our goal is to be a client of that standard for the public conversation layer of the internet. We call it @bluesky"

How will that combat the influential spreading hate speech and inciting violence? It's not clear. It's a typically utopian and unrealistic concept from a Silicon Valley magnate. Other types of media are regulated and standards policed - why not social media?

The likes of Facebook and Twitter need to do more to police their platforms and do so transparently. But the time has come for independent regulatory oversight of them. Regulation won't be perfect, but it will be better than what we have now. The Democrats, if they are serious about changing the toxic nature of online discourse and its corrosive impact on democracy, need to take action.

Peter Griffin is filling in for Tech Blog editor Paul Brislen, who will return from a distant beach before the end of the month...hopefully

Normally this week would involve hundreds of thousands of tech industry workers and journalists descending on Las Vegas for the world's biggest annual trade show - CES.

But the party in Vegas was cancelled this year as CES went virtual to avoid becoming a Covid-19 suer-spreader event. The Consumer Electronics Show, which I've been to half a dozen times, is always a logistical nightmare. Spread across a sprawling series of convention centres and hotels, the show is crowded and features a bewildering agenda of events.

Airpop's smart mask

So it has been nice this year to lean back in my chair and take in the virtual sessions from the comfort of my office. While the usual flurry of product announcements have emerged spanning everything from flat-screen TVs to PCs, smartphones to streaming services, the pandemic has spawned its own significant product category touchless tech.

Hence, we have Ettie, the touchless doorbell from Plott that can take the temperature of a visitor at the door before they are permitted entry to the premises. Alarm.com's video doorbell allows a person to virtually knock, simply presenting their face to the resident without having to press any doorbell button and potentially passing on the virus. 

There's the Coro Bot from Hills Engineering, an autonomous hygiene and cleaning robot that motors around any blasts surfaces with ultraviolet light to clean them of bacteria and kill the virus. It also sucks in the air, purifying it of virus particles. Legions of them could be put to work sterilizing areas where the virus spreads, such as overburdened US and European hospitals full of Covid-19 victims. 

Companion robots, all the rave in Japan, have always been a major theme of CES, but the pandemic has given them a further boost as robot makers come up with new uses for people trying to stave off the isolation and boredom of lockdown. 

Then there's Moxie, the homeschooling companion robot perfect for assisting kids trying to continue their education from lockdown. The robot, from US startup Embodied, helps kids build their social, emotional and cognitive skills and was one of Time's best innovations of 2020.

The BioButton from BioIntelliSense, a wearable sensor that is designed to give early warning that you may have Covid-19. The coin-sized disposable sensor has battery life for up to 90 days and continuously measures temperature, respiratory rate and heart rate. Connecting to your smartphone, it will indicate if your vital signs change to indicate potential infection. I could see that coming in very handy for managed isolation facility and border staff.

MaskFone will appeal to workers who need to talk on the phone regularly but are required to keep their mask on at all times in the workplace. It does what it suggests, building a microphone into a mask that allows for filters to be replaced. There's also earbuds built-in and you can just tap the front of the mask to adjust the volume or skip music tracks on your phone.

With the Airpop Active+ mask you can track your breathing, the air quality around you and remind you when its time to change your mask's filter. 

This sort of touchless tech can't beat effective vaccines in keeping people safe. But as the pandemic has advanced, the public health messages have crystalised around the importance of mask-wearing and maintaining good hygiene standards. This year's CES goes down as a unique moment in the history of the tech show where tech to keep us alive rather than entertained, gets top billing.

Texas attorney general Ken Paxton is leading the lawsuit on behalf of his state and Arkansas, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Mississippi, South Dakota, North Dakota, Utah and Idaho, all states with Republican prosecutors.

The states are seeking financial compensation, penalties, injunctions against Google's operations and, once again, "structural relief", suggesting a separation of parts of Google's business is seen as necessary.

The lawsuit follows a similar theme to the Department of Justice action launched in October, in that it paints a picture of Google as a competition-crushing behemoth. But whereas the DoJ case lasered in on Google's practice of paying billions of dollars to smartphone and web browser makers to ensure its apps and search engine get prominent position on their devices, the coalition of states goes right for Google's jugular.

Don't be evil? Yeah right, say attorneys general

"Google uses its powerful position on every side of the online display markets to unlawfully exclude competition. It also boldly claims that 'we'll never sell your personal information to anyone,' but its entire business model is targeted advertising-the purchase and sale of advertisements targeted to individual users based on their personal information," the lawsuit reads.

"From its earliest days, Google's carefully curated public reputation of 'don't be evil' has enabled it to act with wide latitude. That latitude is enhanced by the extreme opacity and complexity of digital advertising markets, which are at least as complex as the most sophisticated financial markets in the world.

The trouble really began, the suit alleges, in 2008 when Google acquired ad display platform DoubleClick and integrated it into its own advertising business. That gave Google the scale, reach and technology to dig its teeth into the digital ad market. But the suit alleges that Google then went further, rigging ad exchange bidding processes in its favour.

The suit also alleges a cosy and unlawful duopoly arrangement emerged between Google and Facebook, where the two conspired to manipulate online auctions and Google agreed not to go head to head with Facebook if it stayed out of areas of business it prioritised.

Google has reacted defiantly to the lawsuit:

"We've invested in state-of-the-art ad tech services that help businesses and benefit consumers. Digital ad prices have fallen over the last decade. Ad tech fees are falling too. Google's ad tech fees are lower than the industry average," a company spokesperson said.

What does it all mean?

The stakes are high for Google, which generates 80 per cent of its revenue from advertising. 

But Google is gearing up to fight this lawsuit and the DoJ's one too. Facebook is also readying its own legal defence against a Federal Trade Commission lawsuit filed last week that alleges its acquisitions of Instagram and Whatsapp gave it an unassailable lead in social media.

The legal teams of the two Big Tech companies will also be busy on the other side of the Atlantic, with the European Union proposing new legal bills this week which would give regulators new powers to police illegal content and anticompetitive behaviour on online platforms.

The proposals include multi-billion dollar fines for lack of compliance and while individual tech companies are not named, it is clear that the proposed laws are aimed squarely at the likes of Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple.

The UK, mired in efforts to complete its exit from the European Union and struggling to contain Covid-19, has said it will separately pursue similar new rules.

It all means that 2021 will be a record year for activity in competition law with the outcome of these legal actions having consequences for anyone who uses the internet anywhere in the world.

Every day has turned into a turgid mess of Teams meetings, FaceTime calls, Skypes, Zooms, and all the rest (even Amazon Chime which should absolutely be avoided at all costs).

Then there's the kids at home, the running around, their Teams/Zooms/Skype calls and "multi-tasking" (if you can call pretending to do your homework while playing games online with one set of friends and simultaneously making TikToks with another a series of tasks). All told, my New Year's resolution will be for a quiet and peaceful life.

So when Jabra offered to let me test drive its new earbuds - the Elite 85t (RRP: $379) - I jumped at the chance.

I've had a love-hate relationship with noise cancelling headphones for quite some time. I had a pair of early edition Blackbox noise cancelling headphones that were tremendous, but the over-the-head band made my head hurt on long flights and the cushioning part on the ears got hot and sweaty.

Then I had a full over-the-ear pair from Bose which were great but the cushions also wore out eventually.

The rise of the ear buds gave me cause for rejoicing and Apple's AirPod Professionals have long been my standard bit of ear candy. They weigh practically nothing, the sound quality is tremendous and the mic has an uncanny ability to pick up sounds in a way that's so good I've had radio engineers ask me what kind of lapel mic I'm using.

But it's the noise cancellation that was so extraordinary. Tiny microphones inside the pods listen to the surrounding sounds hundreds of times per second and adjust the audio accordingly. They really do make the surrounding world go away.

I have to say these new Jabra devices give Apple a run for its money.

The Elites have an oval shaped earpiece that doesn't sit in your ear as far as the AirPods do, but feels somehow more secure, more comfortable. Time spent on the treadmill or cross-trainer couldn't dislodge them, yet at no time did they feel like they'd been in for too long, as sometimes can happen with the AirPods.

Battery life is on par with them as well - both will get you through a day of audio use, although constant on-time without stopping to take a breath will drain both sets faster than you'd like.

As for audio quality, well that starts as soon as you synch them with the Jabra app and it's rather odd. You're asked your age and your gender and well, colour me old fashioned but I tend to use my ears for listening, not other parts of my anatomy. So what gives?

Jabra says it has worked with GN Hearing to develop a two-stage hearing test. The first part includes an algorithm which analyses "a significant pool of individuals' hearing profiles to be able to predict a user's audiogram just by inputting age and gender". This is then refined further by taking the user through a short hearing test to reach a more accurate personal profile for the individual.

The test (tap the button when you hear the tone) soon makes it clear I should have insisted on those ear defenders as a student working with heavy equipment because there are times when I'm just unable to hear the higher-pitched tones, but pretty soon the test is done and I have to say the sound quality is tremendous. The app fills in where my hearing is limited so I have a full range of sounds delivered to my pummelled eardrums for maximum effect.

Whether I'm listening to podcasts or music, the quality is stunning to behold, and when you turn on the noise cancellation capability you find yourself alone in a crowded world. There are various degrees of cancellation available - I chose the whole hog setting and never regret it.

The Jabra Elite 85t even allow you to connect to two Bluetooth devices at once, something I've yet to find a use for but which seems to excite the more connectable among us.

But I do have a problem with noise cancelling Bluetooth headphones and ear buds and it's nothing to do with them at all. They connect beautifully to both iOS and Android mobiles but when it comes to laptops it's exceedingly frustrating.

The Apple AirPods will connect with my MacBook Air but it can't see the Jabra at all, and my HP notebook can't see either of them. When I do use Teams on an Apple iOS device the Jabra will connect but there's no noise cancellation capability, so I'm stuck listening to the craziness around me.

This is a problem because it means I still need a pair of wired headphones for my Team calls, or I just rely on the built-in speakers and the inevitable feedback whine. Or of course, I just avoid the meetings altogether. Maybe that's the answer.

Sort that out, laptop makers, and you'll have a friend for life.

Stuff reports that Datagrid plans to build a large data centre in North Makarewa in Southland and connect the region to the US and Australia with two new undersea cables at a total cost of around $700 million.

The project is backed by the founders of the Hawaiki Cable, including Remi Galasso and Malcolm Dick, a New Zealand telecoms pioneer who also founded CallPlus. Datagrid has secured access to 100 megawatts of electricity capacity from Meridian Energy's Manapouri hydro scheme. That's regardless of whether the Tiwai aluminium smelter stays in business in the next few years.

A hyperscale data centre is one that can scale up quickly to offer massive capacity and is typically operated by the major data centre providers, including Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Alibaba Cloud.

Those big players would be the target customers for the facilities. Microsoft announced in May that it would spend $100 million to build its own Azure data centre region, which will see facilities based in Auckland.

But why would Microsoft or its competitors decide to base their data centres in an isolated spot well away from the bulk of their customers? It comes down to cost. The largest expense with data centres is powering the massive banks of computer processors - and keeping the equipment cool enough to function properly. The electricity cost - and carbon footprint generated if the power is coming from fossil fuel sources, is a major concern for data centre operators.

Cool and green

That's why Iceland has become a hub on the northern hemisphere for data centres. As far back as 2016, data centres accounted for around one per cent of Iceland's gross domestic product (GDP) and the industry has boomed since then on the back of the Bitcoin mining boom. A handful of local players are busy building new data centres to meet demand from a range of clients, attracted by the low cooling costs and access to hydro and geothermal energy.

The average annual temperature in Iceland's capital Reykjavík is just 5 degrees centigrade. That allows for natural cooling through ventilating the data centres, rather than requiring energy-intensive airconditioning.

Southland's annual average temperature is 9.8 degrees. According to Datagrid's founders, that would allow data centres to cut their cooling costs in half to around 15 per cent of the total cost of operating them.

With millions of customers in the Asia Pacific region, that could prove highly attractive to the big public cloud providers - as long as they can get decent connectivity to Southland data centres. That's why the plan involves replicating the Hawaiki cable links at the bottom of the country, to provide direct links to central nodes on the east coast of Australia.

Southland's future

Iceland is also building more submarine cables to improve access to its growing fleet of data centres, which accounted for the country's power consumption more than doubling in 2018.

With the local council and central Government welcoming the news, the Datagrid developments are positive for the Southland region which faces the prospect of losing thousands of jobs if Tiwai Point winds down production.

Data centres aren't massive direct providers of employment, but they have been seen as big enablers of economic development as they enable the digital economy to advance quickly. While Datagrid may not be the only answer to Southland's economic sustainability, it could well be an important part of the mix.

The Federal Trade Commission, in conjunction with 47 state attorneys general, are suing Facebook alleging anti-competitive practices. It follows the Department of Justice's lawsuit filed against Google in October which alleged that the search giant was using its market dominance to lock competitors out.

The approach taken by the regulators is different but they ultimately seek the same result - structural separation of these Big Tech companies to break their allegedly monopolistic practices. 

In the case of Facebook, the lawsuits centre on its acquisition strategy, which involved the company paying US$1 billion for photo-sharing app Instagram in 2011 and the 2014 purchase of WhatsApp for US$19.3 billion.

Divestiture of assets

Those acquisitions, the FTC suit claims (which is well-written and worth a read), were designed to eliminate threats to Facebook's power. Whether that was the intention or not, the purchases have certainly helped Facebook retain its position as the world's dominant social network - at least in the English-speaking world anyway, with over 3 billion users.

The FTC is seeking an injunction against Facebook that would include the "divestiture of assets, divestiture or reconstruction of businesses (including, but not limited to, Instagram and/or WhatsApp), and such other relief sufficient to restore the competition that would exist absent the conduct alleged".

Another arm of the case takes aim at Facebook's policies around controlling which third parties have access to the network via APIs (application programming interfaces).  

Facebook disclosed over a year ago that it was being investigated by the FTC. It also had to fork out US$5 billion in fines to the FTC and tighten its privacy policies as a result of privacy breaches in the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

But that pay-out barely caused a ripple in the markets given Facebook's strong balance sheet and, yep, its market dominance. Fines aren't being demanded in this case, but a more structural solution aimed at getting to the heart of the perceived problem - Facebook's ability to crush any emerging competitors - or buy them outright.

Facebook for its part is considering the lawsuits and its next moves.  

"Years after the FTC cleared our acquisitions, the government now wants a do-over with no regard for the impact that precedent would have on the broader business community or the people who choose our products every day," the company posted on Twitter.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his executives do have a point. Where was the considered scrutiny of the acquisitions by the FTC nearly a decade ago when Instagram was on the block and especially four years later when Facebook paid its eye-watering sum for Whatsapp?

What it means for us

As with the Google lawsuit, which also takes place in the context of US anti-trust law, the Sherman Act, Facebook's case will be complicated, costly and drawn out over years. In the meantime, Facebook and its other messaging apps will likely continue to be used as normal, however, any plans Facebook still had to further integrate its messaging platforms will now surely be on hold.

The suit has major implications for how Facebook uses data in future, how it interacts with other companies seeking to access its network with software interfaces, and ultimately its future shape as an advertising platform for New Zealand businesses.

Big is not necessarily bad in competition law. The issue is whether being big gives Google and Facebook the power to stop anyone else competing against them. That's the crux of the matter and the tech landscape could alter significantly based on the lawusit outcomes.

Who's next?

The question now is who is next? Will Apple and Amazon also find themselves fighting sweeping antitrust action? 

Apple's Tim Cook clearly sees his company as standing apart from the others.

"Some people see Silicon Valley as monolithic," he told The Outside Podcast this week.

"And so in particular, the larger companies they sort of put in one bucket, if you will. Some of the big issues that are surrounding tech today are the lack of responsibility taken on a platform about what happens. We clearly take responsibility. We make tough decisions."

US regulators may well beg to differ. One thing is for sure, President Biden's first term in office is likely to also see exhausting legal action rolling on in the background as Big Tech fights a long-anticipated rearguard action.

Deloitte's Top 200 Index features the country's largest 200 companies by revenue, which collectively generated $173 billion in 2019. They span all sectors, from retail and agriculture to transport and construction.

But when it came time to choose some of the top performers of the year, Deloitte's team of judges leaned towards companies in tech-related industries.

The awards "recognised those businesses that have gone beyond simply responding and recovering, and are taking this opportunity to transform and rebuild for a stronger future," said Deloitte.

The criteria include the latest financial measures, as well as non-financial and other qualitative measures of organisational performance, such as corporate reputation, approach to environmental management and others.

Weighing up all of those factors Fisher & Paykel Healthcare named Company of the Year with chief executive Lewis Gradon winning Chief Executive Officer of the Year.

Rising to the Covid challenge

By any measure, it has been a massive year for the designer and manufacturer of high-quality health equipment. In the half-year to September 30, revenue was up 59 per cent to $910.2 million, while profit jumped 86 per cent to $225.5 million.

F&P Healthcare's hospital-related business internationally nearly doubled its revenue as it ramped up production to serve public health workers treating patients infected with Covid-19. The company's Optiflow and Airvo systems saw particularly strong demand.  

"This reflected a worldwide change in clinical practice. Informed by emerging studies and anecdotal evidence, respiratory specialists began leading with nasal high flow therapy before resorting to ventilators," F&P Healthcare noted in its half-year results.

At the same time, the company retained its position as one of the country's largest investors in research and development, which accounted for seven per cent of operating revenue in the half-year, $64.4 million.

Xero, which won the Best Growth Strategy category, also had a big year on the back of helping small businesses navigate the impacts of Covid-19 with its cloud-based accounting services in strong demand.

In the half-year to September 30, Xero turned a net profit after tax of $34.5 million, up from $1.3 million in the previous half-year period.

Operating revenue was up 21 per cent to nearly $410 million.

Animation Research founder Ian Taylor

Road to recovery

Chorus won the Most Improved Performance award, reflecting a change in the company's fortunes that included a strong rally in its share price, which is up 21 per cent so far this year. That reflects the company being able to put regulatory uncertainty behind it and successfully rolling out the majority of the ultrafast broadband network. Though further regulatory pressures remain as the Commerce Commission looks to change how UFB wholesale prices are calculated.

Finally, the Visionary Leader award wen to Animation Research founder Ian Taylor, who had to re-organise his business to adapt to the new reality of the pandemic. Running graphics and animation services around the world for some of the top sports events, Taylor had to overcome travel restrictions to allow his team to operate remotely from Dunedin.

The year also saw him team up with Sam Morgan to push the deployment of a Covid card device to improve contact tracing efforts to fight the pandemic. That effort ended in frustration as the Government moved slowly on the programme, though Morgan and Taylor can take some comfort from the fact that trials of a similar Covid card are now underway.

There are 11 companies on the Deloitte Top 200 index that could be considered to be in the technology or telecommunications space, with Xero, Datacom, Spark among the biggest and multinationals IBM and Samsung also featuring.

In a letter to the minister, NZTech chief executive Graeme Muller wrote that with Clark also taking the consumer affairs, commerce and statistics portfolios, there was "considerable opportunity to advance financial technology, education technology, artificial intelligence, blockchain as well as digital identity".

But NZTech would still like to see a fully-fledged technology portfolio by the next election, a role that would also span hi-tech manufacturing and biotechnology.

"This respects the natural division between Research, Science and Innovation, a separate portfolio and what is essentially applied technology," wrote Muller.

NZTech recommended that a technology branch be established within the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment from 2022 "to take ownership of cross-cutting policy, skill development, funding/grants and the international promotion of New Zealand tech".

NZTech's proposed action to attract top tech talent

It urged the Government to forge ahead with its Industry Transformation Plan for Digital Technologies, but to use that as the basis for the first 'Digital New Zealand

Strategy', which it said should be in place by the start of 2023. 

The measures, as well as implementing a national strategy around artificial intelligence, would seem to reflect widespread concern in the tech sector that the Government lacks a cohesive strategy on how to leverage technology to boost the country's social, economic and environmental wellbeing. 

Clark has yet to make any substantive comments about where he plans to put his focus in his new portfolio areas. But the rest of the NZTech Briefing for Incoming Ministers should give him plenty of food for thought about what could be done in the next 100 days as well as in the course of Labour's full term.

The BIM spans areas well-canvassed ahead of the election, such as fast-tracking visas for high-tech workers and investors, boosting the ElevateNZ fund for tech start-ups and updating government procurement rules to give the domestic tech sector more of an opportunity to grow its capacity.

But NZTech also advocates for an overhaul of regulations to allow greater use of biotech tools such as gene editing, the formation of a plan to "end digital poverty" and the creation of an infrastructure forecasting and management system.

It would use AI to "aid and model decision support at both local and central government".

Think bigger

NZTech also suggests addressing what many see as a yawning gap in tech-related blue skies research funding. It wants to see a "standalone technology investigator-initiated research fund" separate to the Marsden Fund, which it says is "ill-suited to technology".

The NZTech BIM amounts to a wish list for a tech-sector craving strong leadership, better decision making and support to grow the digital economy quickly.

Some of the work, such as the Industry Transformation Plan, is already underway and will inform the priorities Clark has on his plate over the next few years.

But the subtext of the TechNZ BIM is that we need to think bigger and be more ambitious for tech. The challenge has been laid down - The question now is whether the Government will listen and act.

Read NZTech's Briefing Paper for Incoming Minister here.

IRD won the Business Transformation through Digital and IT section of the CIO Awards, beating out strong projects from finalists Countdown and PlaceMakers. Common to all three however was a need to leverage technology to respond to the challenges thrown up by Covid.

For IRD, which was preparing to roll out Phase 4 of its $1.8 billion, six-year business transformation programme, it involved sending nearly 4,000 staff home to work remotely running the country's tax systems, and enabling the Government to dispense wage subsidies and business loans.

"When it came to small business loans, we made $600 million available in the first week the scheme was live," Gary Baird, Inland Revenue's Deputy Commissioner, Enterprise Services and Chief Technology Officer, told me earlier this week.

Enabling policy agility

"It was literally six weeks from the minister raising the question of whether it was possible, to literally turning the system on."

The new integration tax system IRD has implemented as part of one of the biggest IT upgrades in our government's history allowed the team to move at a pace that wouldn't have been possible if the old infrastructure was still in place.

"We made significant child support changes back in about 2012," says Baird.

"But implementing those changes took around three years, with a couple of hundred people on the project, and well north of $100 million in investment."

A move to Microsoft 365 and upgrade of core admin functions to cloud services had allowed a fairly seamless move to working from home too.

Baird says the Covid response proved the ability of the tax system to deliver the "policy agility" the Government was seeking as an outcome of the project, which will enter its final phase next year.

Also transforming at speed as a result of the pandemic was supermarket retailer Countdown, which had to reconfigure how its stores operate to accommodate social distancing measures and accommodate a surge in online shopping.

A key priority, says Sally Copland, General Manager, Brand and Countdown-X and acting Managing Director, Countdown, was adapting the online shopping system to prioritise the elderly and immuno-compromised

"We had to play our role, to feed those most vulnerable in New Zealand. That was the most important thing," says Copland.

To meet the online demand, Countdown made the decision to convert some of its supermarkets into "dark stores" that would fulfil online orders only.

"We would actually shut supermarkets," Copland told me.

"That decision was made in one meeting. In the second meeting, we determined which store locations we would go for first."

Countdown's Sally Copland

Going dark

Major changes to Countdown's supply chain and distribution were needed to keep the groceries moving and there was even time for new innovations to be rolled out with the supermarket chain piloting a contactless shopping system at its Ponsonby store which allows shoppers to bypass the checkout and scan and pay for everything on a smartphone app.

Copland, who this week picked up the CIO of the Year Award, credits the team and culture at Countdown-X, the supermarket chain's technology and innovation division, with allowing the company to move at speed to handle the crisis.

Also adapting to the new normal was building supplies retailer PlaceMakers, which was in the midst of revamping its customer experience when the virus struck. After several years of upgrading and digitising its core systems, PlaceMakers accelerated development of its PlaceMakers Trade. It lets builders order, track and collect their orders from PlaceMakers outlets with the use of QR codes using the Skip the Counter service. 

It's a stark difference with the traditional way of doing business in the PlaceMakers supplies and timber yard.

"People were handing bits of paper to each other," says Wayne Armstrong, Head of Digital Channels at PlaceMakers.

Skip the counter

"Jobs were priced separately and with a lot of specialised products, there was a lot of scope for mistakes to be made."

PlaceMakers used to print off 22 million pages of paper a year. The digitisation of processes and use of handheld computers and barcode scanners has reduced that by more than half. That initial work allowed 800,000 manual transactions to be automated too.

With nearly a quarter of PlaceMakers' key accounts now using the Trade app after just a few months, digital channels are now integral to doing business with customers in an industry considered to be one of the last still to experience significant digital disruption.

Congratulations to all winners and finalists in the CIO Awards 2020.

Check out my case studies on the business transformation programmes at Inland Revenue Department, Countdown and PlaceMakers.

The App Store Small Business Program, which will be available to most developers who stay below that revenue threshold, goes into effect from January 1, 2021. It will see Apple's cut of paid app revenue and in-app purchases fall from 30% currently to 15% and comes as Apple has faced heat from iOS developers and politicians in the US Congress over what is considered monopolistic and anti-competitive behaviour in the way it controls access to the App Store and requires payments be made through its platform.

Just how many of the 28 million registered 28 iOS developers make less than US$1 million (NZ$1.45 million) in revenue from the App Store each year? According to app store analytics provider Sensor Tower, the move will make 98% of iOS developers eligible for the reduced fee rate. But those developers account for only 5% of App Store revenue, so the impact on Apple's bottom line will be tiny.

$1.45 million - the revenue threshold for Kiwi developers

Still, the lower fee rate will appeal to New Zealand iOS developers trying to elbow their way up the rankings in the App Store and particularly those selling niche apps that consistently generate hundreds of thousands of dollars of revenue each year. 

Apple will take applications for the scheme and base admission to it on 2020 revenue. Going over the $1 million threshold will see developers have to pay the full 30% rate while developers who dip under the threshold will see their fees reduced.

in launching the scheme, Apple CEO Tim Cook said small business was "the backbone of our global economy and the beating heart of innovation and opportunity in communities around the world".

"The App Store has been an engine of economic growth like none other, creating millions of new jobs and a pathway to entrepreneurship accessible to anyone with a great idea. Our new program carries that progress forward - helping developers fund their small businesses, take risks on new ideas, expand their teams, and continue to make apps that enrich people's lives," added Cook.

Apple will clearly win goodwill from smaller developers, but halving commission won't apply to the major app developers who are increasingly critical of Apple's commission rates and payment options. Apple most high-profile fight has been with game maker Epic, which yesterday said it was taking legal action against Apple in Australia, the latest salvo in an acrimonious fight that centres around Apple's insistence that it takes a share of game revenue from Epic's best-selling game Fortnite.

COVID struck in February and knocked the entire world on its butt. Economically, we're yet to see the full impact but socially and medically this has been a nightmare of a year. A global pandemic that coincided with an anti-science, big man political wave has seen the health professionals scrambling to convince people of the need for everything from social isolation to masks to hand washing, only to be rebuffed constantly all around the world.

And if we did do what we were told, that was to stay home, to isolate, not to go out, not to socialise and not to go to work. Offices and their shared surfaces are suddenly no-man's land to be avoided at all costs.

Instead of fighting off zombie hordes we've become generational teenagers, forced to sit on the couch and binge on box-set television.

Here in New Zealand we have done well. We've avoided the worst of the medical chaos and we've been able to react sensibly in ways many countries have found alien.

But one other sector has also done well through all of this, and that's the tech sector. This week has seen the launch of the annual TIN report into just what the year has been like and frankly the word for it is "robust".

You can see why of course. Even if your company isn't a "tech" company, you use and need a lot of tech gear to operate. Whether it's an EFTPOS terminal or a laptop, a website or an ERP system, most companies and organisations require at least some kind of kit if they're to order parts, build products, entertain their audiences or keep the tax system moving.

For many of us it was simply a case of picking up the laptop and not going into the office. Instead, we made ourselves at home at home, and became experts at Zoom, Teams, Skype, Google Hangouts and all the rest.

But for some companies, getting to that point was quite a journey in and of itself. Organisations quickly found that having a payroll system on a server in the office is fine if you're all at work but when you're at home that becomes a bit of a problem come payday. Others found that on-site storage and systems really should have been moved into the cloud some time ago, and yet more found that when their retail outlets were closed down, shoppers wanted to buy stuff online and were quite happy to have it shipped to them. If only they'd built an e-commerce platform when they had the chance.

This year saw the TIN200 reach$12.7 billion in annual revenue, up more than 8% of the previous year. That figure includes $9.4 billion worth of exports which amply demonstrates how strong the tech sector is becoming.

We're also the place to go for a good job. Last year we added more than 4000 of them, up 8% but even better than that, the average salary in New Zealand is more than $80,000 - around 21% higher than the average.

Growth, wages, opportunity, diversity - the tech sector stretches from the manufacturing end with Fisher & Paykel Healthcare (suddenly a boom stock) right through to game development or cloud services, accounting software or ERP systems. Whether you want to make movies or money, the tech sector has a role for you and the potential to take you out to the world.

It's also a story of regional economic opportunity. Sure, Auckland and the other main centres have the lion's share of jobs and prospects, but you don't have to be on Queen Street to be in the tech industry. Canterbury accounts for 7% of the industry, nearly 8% are in the Waikato and Otago has another 3.5%. You can and often do work from anywhere and that's great for our prospects as we come out of lockdown and emerge blinking into the future.

The trick now is to focus, to harness this opportunity and turn potential into factual. Next year and 2022 will be the real crunch in terms of economic pressure. While we wait for the rest of the world to open up we have to find new ways to earn a crust, and high value tourists with money to burn really is only one tiny fraction of what we need.

Tech can be the answer, and if this year's TIN report is anything to go by, it's worth getting off the couch for.

Tech sector has continued upward trajectory of growth for another financial year; strongly positioned to take advantage of New Zealand's unique position

Key Highlights for 2020

• ·         $12.7B: TIN200 total revenue
• ·         $972m: TIN200 total revenue growth
• ·         55,000: Number of TIN200 full-time staff
• ·         4,000: new jobs created by TIN200 companies
• ·         $9.4B: Total TIN200 exports
• ·         ICT growth of 11.4% or $541.8 million
• ·         High Tech Manufacturing: greatest share of TIN200 revenue: 51.5%
• ·         Fintech fastest growing sector for 5^th consecutive year
• ·         Asia growth of 19.2% or $123.3 million
• ·         Wellington/Manawatu region again demonstrates strongest revenue growth of 10.6% 
• ·         Datacom Group #1 on TIN200 list 
• ·         Volpara Health Technologies recipient of TIN Rocket Award 2020 for biggest jump in TIN200 rank (climbed 54 places)

Export revenue for New Zealand tech companies is on the rise, as an increasingly diverse international market heightens its demand for Kiwi-designed and manufactured tech products. 

According to the 16th annual Technology Investment Network (TIN) Report launched today at Tech Pulse 2020, export revenue for the TIN200 companies rose by 10.6% to a total of $9.4B this year.  TIN200 revenue reached $12.7B in 2020, slightly less than the $1B annual growth recorded previously, but overall, the TIN200 shows ongoing strong growth in the face of tough economic headwinds.

This year's TIN Report provides a partial view of the impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on the tech sector's performance in 2020 so far.

"With continuing double-digit export growth creating record employment growth, the TIN200 companies are well positioned in terms of scale, growing profitability and global spread to absorb the negative impact of COVID-19 and take advantage of the opportunities for growth as a result," said Greg Shanahan, founder and managing director of TIN.

Key Highlights from this year's Report are:

TIN200 companies continue to demonstrate strong year-on-year growth

In 2020, with the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic starting to take global effect in the final quarter, total TIN200 revenue reached $12.7B. This is up 8.3% - or $972m - on 2019, but a dip in overall revenue growth, dropping below the $1B recorded last year.

Over 50,000 staff are now employed globally by the TIN200
The group now employs nearly 55,000 staff around the world, of which over half are employed in New Zealand.  These employees are paid over $4.5B in wages - another milestone never before reached by the TIN200. The average wage for a TIN200 employee is more than $82,000.

A record number of companies now have revenues of over $50m

In 2015, 38 tech companies in New Zealand had revenues over $50m. Five years later, that has increased to 56, and with it the capacity of these companies to scale even further and explore new market opportunities from a position of strength. Companies with revenue of over $50m accounted for 70% of growth in the TIN200.

ICT firms show strength yet again, lifting both their TIN200 presence and profitability

With 101 companies now in the TIN200 (up from 94 last year), ICT continues to be the driving force behind the New Zealand tech sector, growing its revenue by 11.4%, comparative to the 8.3% overall growth of the TIN200. The ICT sector's drive for profitability was also rewarded with a 38.7% lift in reported EBITDA.

New jobs in the tech sector surge to record levels

Over 4,000 new jobs were created by the TIN200 companies in 2020 - an 8% lift on 2019 - pushing the total number of NZ tech sector-generated jobs internationally up to a record 55,167. Relative to the increasing number of ICT firms in the TIN200, jobs in that primary sector increased by 3,049, while the number of High-tech Manufacturing rose by 977.

Fintech surges again as the fastest-growing secondary sector

In a socially-distanced world, mobile and digital solutions that enable money to flow through economies without personal contact are increasingly in demand, and the NZ tech sector delivered, with Fintechs registering as the fastest growing sector on the TIN200 for the fifth consecutive year. With a 5-year CAGR of 31% and several new company arrivals on the TIN200 in 2020, close attention will no doubt be focused on the NZ Fintech sector in 2021 and beyond.

Public Companies lead the growth of the TIN200

Revenue growth from Public Companies in 2020 was exceptionally strong, with the 25 listed companies on the TIN200 representing nearly two-thirds (62%) of the total revenue growth -  an impressive growth rate of 20% on last year, led by some of the biggest companies on TIN's list.

Fewer TIN200 Rising Star companies in 2020 still account for nearly half the growth

This group of 22 companies from the TIN200 in 2020 that demonstrated sustained high-growth over three years was down a little from 2019's record high of 29 companies, and yet they represent 49.5% of the overall growth in 2020, compared to 46.6% in 2019 group.

The Wellington/Manawatu region shows strongest percentage growth, but Auckland still leads on revenue

With 120 of the TIN200 companies headquartered in Auckland, New Zealand's largest city continues to be the powerhouse of the NZ tech sector. However, the region containing the nation's capital continued to perform well also, with Wellington region companies generating nearly a quarter of the TIN200 revenue (23.5%) and at the fastest growth rate of 10.6%.

"The key phrase that has resonated with me throughout 2020 is that we may not have all the answers, but we do have purpose. In the midst of this difficult year, and certainly for the years ahead, TIN's purpose has never been clearer to me than it is now. We pursue a simple mission: to help facilitate the growth of the technology sector in New Zealand," said Mr Shanahan.

Copies of the 2020 TIN Report, which is sponsored by New Zealand Trade and Enterprise (NZTE), Absolute IT, BNZ, EY, James & Wells, and NZX, can be ordered here. 

Microsoft-owned Github has also restored the code of a project, YouTube-dl, which it had removed from its vast online code repository, after receiving a take-down order from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

That body has in the past been very active in pursuing internet pirates using file-sharing systems to download albums and songs. But last month it turned its attention to the developers of YouTube-dl, complaining that the popular software that was first developed in 2006, not long after YouTube's creation, facilitates piracy by allowing people to download Youtube videos for offline viewing.

That functionality is, officially anyway, a feature available only to YouTube Premium users - as a subscriber, I use it all the time to save videos for later to watch without consuming mobile data.

But is an unofficial tool allowing YouTube users to do the same thing a breach of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act which "criminalises production and dissemination of technology, devices, or services intended to circumvent measures that control access to copyrighted works"?

Actually, no circumvention

Github initially thought so. On receiving the RIAA's complaint, alleging a breach of section 2101 of the Act, it removed the code. But then it received a letter from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, pointing out that YouTube-dl "does not violate section 1201 of the DMCA because it does not "circumvent" any technical protection measures on YouTube videos".

While the RIAA claimed the software managed to unencrypt a video file on YouTube, breaking the website's digital rights management, it wasn't the case at all.

"Youtube-dl stands in place of a Web browser and performs a similar function with respect to user-uploaded videos," wrote Mitchell L. Stoltz, Senior Staff Attorney at the EFF. 

"Importantly, Youtube-dl does not decrypt video streams that are encrypted with commercial DRM technologies, such as Widevine, that are used by subscription video sites, such as Netflix," he added.

What had really got the RIAA hot under the collar was some references in the software code's documentation to copyrighted songs. But Youtube-dl only allows streaming of a few seconds of each song to verify that the software is working. It didn't contain full copies of the songs. 

The EFF also made the argument that, like with the Bittorrent file-sharing software, Youtube-dl has numerous legitimate uses.

Legitimate uses

"It is used by journalists and human rights organisations to save eyewitness videos, by educators to save videos for classroom use, by YouTubers to save backup copies of their own uploaded videos, and by users worldwide to watch videos on hardware that can't run a standard web browser, or to watch videos in their full resolution over slow or unreliable Internet connections."

Github has reflected on the incident and undertaken to make some changes, the creation of the US$1 million legal fund being the most significant. It will also be more circumspect about future copyright infringement claims, requiring that they be subject to a technical and legal review before code is removed from Github. 

If a dispute drags on, the code will remain in place until it is resolved and developers will be given the opportunity to amend it before takedown.

The RIAA hasn't responded to Github's reversal yet, but open source developers have applauded Github's stance. 

New Zealand's own Copyright Act is in the midst of a review kicked off in 2018 and which could see some potential changes to clarify where technology can play a legitimate role, such as in bypassing geoblocking measures on DVDs. Format shifting and time-shifting may also get some attention.

China just held its equivalent, Singles Day, which sees the likes of Alibaba, JD.com, Pinduoduo and other big retailers sharply discount millions of products. Once again the sales fest has outstripped Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined. 

Alibaba set a record with US$56 billion in sales in 24 hours - and it is continuing the sale for an additional day, so will add billions more. Hundreds of millions of Chinese, as well as buyers from all over the world shop on the Chinese equivalent of Amazon and eBay and the high sales volume suggest the pandemic hasn't dented consumer appetite.

That trend is reflected in the most recent GST receipts for New Zealand, which showed businesses paid nearly $1.2 billion more to IRD in GST in the first seven months of the year, compared to the same period in 2019.

While China largely has coronavirus under control, a lack of international travel was always anticipated to boost sales through the e-tailing giants, which have been attracting more big-name Western brands to the country via online stores.

Alibaba rival JD.com reported over US$11 billion in sales in the same 24 hour period. The brief sales frenzy is seen as increasingly important in attracting new customers, who are lured in with big discounts and then converted to repeat customers through loyalty schemes, app sign-ups and integration into China's social media networks including WeChat (the Facebook equivalent) and Weibo (Twitter's opposite).

Beijing gets tough

But banking all that cash has failed to disguise the fact that China's internet sector is facing the prospect of anti-trust action similar in nature to what the US Department of Justice launched last month against its own internet giant Google.

In fact, Chinese tech giants have collectively shed US$290 billion in market value over the last 48 hours after the Chinese Government announced regulations designed to curb the monopolistic power of a handful of massive tech companies.

China's antitrust regulator has sought feedback on a plan to build a framework preventing anti-competitive practices such as "colluding on sharing sensitive consumer data, alliances that squeeze out smaller rivals and subsidizing services at below cost to eliminate competitors", Bloomberg reported.

The Government also intends to tighten up on the Variable Interest Entity scheme, which is how Chinese companies attract foreign investment or lists overseas. A rule change would require companies to now apply for specific operating approval.

Meanwhile, New Zealand exporters see the big Chinese e-tailers as an attractive route to market as digital trade becomes increasingly important during the pandemic. But while Kiwis are able to buy products from the likes of Alibaba, Singles Day doesn't register much excitement outside of China. 

The IRD said this week that the Government was on track to rake in $100 million in GST through the "Amazon tax". It is applied to goods worth less than $1,000  and sold by foreign retailers turning over sales to New Zealanders of more than $60,000 a year.

The US company which does most of its software development in China, has just settled with the US Federal Trade Commission over "misleading claims" it made about the encryption it uses to keep Zoom calls secure.

The settlement comes as Nasdaq-listed Zoom's shares dropped 17% on the back of news that pharmaceutical giant Pfizer's vaccine candidate has been shown to be 90% effective in trials and that it will apply for approval by the end of the month to start mass-producing it.

While Zoom claimed that calls were protected by "end to end encryption", it emerged in March that this only related to the connection over the company's cloud platform between Zoom calls. In fact, Zoom had the cryptographic keys allowing it to access its customers video meetings. 

Typically, end-to-end encryption (E2EE) is defined as security that prevents anyone but the sender of the communication and the receiver from accessing or intercepting the message, even the provider of the encrypted service. 

 "Zoom's misleading claims gave users a false sense of security, according to the FTC's complaint, especially for those who used the company's platform to discuss sensitive topics such as health and financial information," the FTC said in a statement today.

Zoom has scrambled to implement better security as demand for its video conferencing surged as stay at home orders saw business meetings shift online all over the world. Many corporate users were uncomfortable using Zoom over security concerns, instead opting for Microsoft Teams, Cisco Webex or even Google Meet.

US government departments, in particular, are wary of Zoom due to concerns that Chinese Communist Party agents may be able to gain access to sensitive information via the Zoom platform. While Zoom is considered more user friendly than its rivals, the questions around its security sees it often relegated to use for non-sensitive conversations only. 

Even worse than the back door in its "end to end" encryption, Zoom held unencrypted copies of its customers' recorded meetings. This was likely to pose a bigger risk of data breaches and hacking attacks than the meetings being infiltrated while they were in progress. 

"Zoom told users who recorded a meeting that it would save a secure, encrypted recording of the meeting when it ended. In reality, Zoom kept unencrypted recordings on its servers for up to 60 days before moving them to its secure cloud storage," wrote the FTC's consumer education specialist, Alvaro Puig.

The FTC also slapped Zoom for another security screw up. It installed an application on Mac users' computers called ZoomOpener, which let the software bypass the security features of Apple's Safari web browser. 

The FTC argues that this could have allowed strangers to "spy on users through their computer's web cameras"

"Hackers could have exploited the vulnerability to download malware onto - and take control of - users' computers," it added.

Deleting Zoom didn't get rid of ZoomOpener which Zoom presented as a bug fix, neglecting to tell its users it was installing a web server on their computer. While the lax security and disingenuous messaging on Zoom's part is serious, the FTC doesn't typically impose fines for a first offence, so Zoom avoids paying a big financial penalty for its transgressions.

Zoom said last month that it was rolling out real end to end encryption for free and premium users holding video conferences with up to 200 participants.

"In a meeting with E2EE enabled, nobody except each participant - not even Zoom's servers - has access to the encryption keys being used to encrypt the meeting," Zoom explained.

Those measures should satisfy the FTC's key concern over false claims regarding encryption. But Zoom will have to submit to the scrutiny of an independent third-party to access its security every two years and to notify the FTC in the case of a data breach. That latter requirement will become mandatory for New Zealand companies next month with the arrival of the new Privacy Act.

Hyperfibre, which is based on the UFB network that has been built out over the last decade in cities and towns the length of the country with taxpayer funding, was launched in February in areas such as Queenstown, Wanaka and Cromwell.

The expansion of Hyperfibre will cover areas where three million Kiwis live and while residential users will enjoy the huge increase in download and upload speeds now possible, the service is really aimed at small businesses requiring the capacity to run digital businesses. 

"Hyperfibre unleashes a new era of hyper-connectivity, enabling businesses to innovate and supercharge their digital operations," said Chorus chief customer officer, Ed Hyde.

"It is the ultimate in internet and to be able to offer access to more than three million kiwis from today is an incredible development for the country."

That's no understatement. Australia's largest broadband retailer Telstra offers plans based on the nation's National Broadband Network with advertised speeds of 50Mbps (megabits per second) "typical download and 20Mbps typical upload speeds between 9am-5pm, weekdays".

Those plans are priced from A$100 a month after an initial 12-month contract at $88 a month. Enterprise customers across the Tasman can pay substantially more to have fibre connected directly to their business. But Australia's fibre network has not been set up in a way to deliver lightning speeds to small and medium-sized businesses the way it has here.

Hyperfibre is a symmetric connection, so the upload and download speeds are equally as fast, which will suit companies sending large amounts of data to cloud computing infrastructure.

"Hyperfibre is seen as ideal for organisations with demanding, mission-critical data access needs. Early customers are already seeing the benefits," says Vocus chief executive, consumer and business, Taryn Hamilton.

"The speeds we can offer these days are truly staggering. If you told a Kiwi internet user a few years ago that they could get a 4Gbps connection at their house they would have laughed at you."

Are there any applications for home users that could take advantage of a 4Gbps?

"It's comically fast, and if we are honest, most Kiwi households wouldn't be able to use more than a small chunk of it," says Hamilton. 

"But, if internet history has taught us anything, technology will find a way to use all that bandwidth."

4K TV streaming is an obvious application as well as cloud-based gaming services. But a 4Gbps has th emost potential for a company owner that may previously have felt tied to a large city because of the need for good broadband access. Now a digital business can get that access, in their home office, in many parts of the country.

Hyperfibre plans:

Now available in all Chorus UFB1 fibre areas 

Currently 2Gig retail plans based on Chorus Hyperfibre start from $149.00 NZD per month

Currently 4Gig retail plans based on Chorus Hyperfibre start from $179.00 NZD per month

Capacity to deliver future broadband speeds of up to 8Gbps

In the tech world things never stand still for long. Sure, we might have a period of calm but it's usually before the storm and while tech products have kind of plateaued lately, that's sure to change.

Next year we'll see 5G devices and capability really begin to hit its straps. You can forget about Vodafone's premium service fee - that won't survive actual adoption - but you can expect a lot of stories that basically say "is that it?" because users won't necessarily see the difference between 100Mbit/s and 400Mbit/s when they're downloading their cat videos.

The real impact will come later, when the Internet of Things (IoT) market really takes off and we start to see a bunch of real time apps and devices start to have an impact. I'm looking forward to getting rid of my garage door opener and just relying on my phone telling my house I'm in the driveway and it should open the door for me. We shall see.

But that aside, 2021 won't see a major change in telco services I don't believe. We're already commoditising mobile in particular and that's likely to continue. Flat rate, all you can eat plans, with unlimited voice and text messages (that nobody uses any more) will be standard. This is good for consumers.

Of course, to really deliver 5G nirvana we need 2Degrees to get on board as well. Fingers crossed we see that happen early in 2021 before the market moves away from them. They've brought so much competition to bear it would be great to see that continue.

Otherwise, I have to say telco is a bit dull, and I for one am delighted by that.

Of course, now we're all totally reliant on telecommunications for everything - work, television, music, chatting, paying bills, interacting with government, ordering food, buying disposable goods with our disposable incomes and all the rest - so it had better be pretty ubiquitous and consistent. Sadly, large parts of the country (rural and remote) and some tracts of the population (poor and elderly) will remain outliers. This has to be addressed but 2021 will be busy with other things so it might slip off the radar.

What other things? Well I suspect we're all going to be working from home for quite some time to come. The hybrid model of some days in the city at the office and some days at home in the home office are likely to continue until a vaccine is developed for COVID-19.

This vexes me as I have family overseas whom I would very much like to see, but also we have an economy that I'd like to see prosper and tourism plays a large part in that.

But the new hybrid model does help with the stress levels. I've long been a fan of working from home and like the combination of meetings in town/productive hours at home, but the city office spaces aren't really set up for this combination of work-life balance.

Expect to see CBD office space crash in terms of price and to keep tenants happy, watch as open plan pods are ripped out and replaced with floors of meeting rooms with good coffee machines. That way we can come into town, sort out our meetings and then head for home afterwards.

Of course, two other major issues will raise their heads next year as a result of this. The first is that the move to cloud computing will hit warp speed and even those laggard government departments that have never really got the whole remote working thing will have to jump in boots and all. The country will be better for it - think of the resilience that is baked in if everyone is scattered to the winds. When the power goes out your entire call centre will shrug and keep on taking calls. If an earthquake knocks out the CBD you'll mostly be free to carry on.

The second issue is that cybersecurity will become everyone's number one bugbear. From the multi-factor authentication you'll need to log in to company databases to the passphrases we'll use for email to the thumb prints and facial recognition requirements of the devices themselves, we will be inundated with security measures and as annoying as they are they'll be essential. Because we'll also see an inexorable increase in the number of attacks on systems from both script kiddies in their mom's basements right through to organised crime and on to state-level actors in their bunkers who are trying all the doors and windows they can find to see just where they can infiltrate not necessarily to do any harm but to sit and watch and wait for the right moment.

Of course, we won't always get it right - so expect to see yet more mega-breaches where hundreds of millions of email addresses and passwords will be exposed to the harsh light of day for all to see and feast upon. Hopefully we won't see too many but in 2019 we lost control of four billion records, according to one security researcher, so the odds are not in our favour.

All told next year is likely to be a repeat of this year but with less patience (and hopefully fewer patients). We have an opportunity to grow our tech sector by a bigger margin than we have in the past, we'll have the same constraints around employment and getting people into training, and we're likely to see no sign of any real attempt to rein in the social media sector before it destroys what's left of our democracy.

But all that aside, the good thing about next year is it won't be 2020.

SpaceX on Sunday (New Zealand time), launched a batch of 60 satellites as part of its Starlink network that the company intends to use to launch a global satellite broadband service that will target users in rural areas.

A SpaceX rocket carrying the satellites was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida and is the 15th Starlink launch so far, with around 900 satellites now in low Earth orbit. 

Meanwhile, a BusinessDesk investigation has found that Musk is quietly laying the groundwork for a presence in New Zealand that could see it offer the satellite broadband service and use the Awarua satellite ground station near Invercargill to communicate with Starlink satellites covering the lower extremities of the planet.

A company called Starlink NZ, with three directors, has been set up and three trademarks had been applied for, though they were knocked back for being too similar to Subaru's Starlink in-car communications system, BusinessDesk reported.

Robin McNeill, who runs the Awarua satellite ground station, is listed as a director of Starlink, but wouldn't discuss Musk's plans, citing a non-disclosure agreement. Nevertheless, McNeill was clear in pointing out the benefits of international companies basing antennae at the site

"We have a big green flat paddock at the bottom of the world with 100 gigabits per second fibre-optic, electricity, generators, backup and technicians," he told BusinessDesk.

"It's flat as a pancake. We can see right to the horizon and there are no people, so no radio interference, and no radio users compared to the rest of the world. It's very easy to do frequency coordination."

Starlink wouldn't need to have a presence in New Zealand to offer its services, which will be offered as an online service and require a satellite receiver from the company to receive broadband from its satellites. Starlink plans to have 12,000 satellites in orbit to blanket the planet with coverage.

But BusinessDesk reported that Starlink NZ held multiple spectrum licences for satellite communications locally and was setting up internet gateway locations at Wellsford and Cromwell.

Not everyone is excited about Musk's satellite broadband plans. Visible in the night sky at times, as pinpricks of light in a line formation, astronomers have lambasted Starlink for the impact it will increasingly have on nighttime observations of the sky.

Dunedin-based astronomer and the director of Otago Museum, Dr Ian Griffin, describes the satellites as "celestial vermin".

"After seven launches, the 420 satellites at present in orbit are becoming annoyingly familiar sights during this stargazer's observing sessions," he wrote in the Otago Daily Times last week.

The New York State Department of Financial Services yesterday granted PayPal a conditional "Bitlicence", which allows it to trade and hold cryptocurrencies in the US where it is based.

PayPal, in partnership with New York-based fintech start-up Paxos, now plans to roll out cryptocurrency support in the coming weeks, which would allow users of the leading Bitcoin, Ethereum and litecoin to buy, sell and hold the currencies on the PayPal platform.'

Digital wallets for holding and trading cryptocurrencies are nothing new, but PayPal's reach with 26 million online retailers using it worldwide could transform use of cryptocurrencies, which have remained obscure to most consumers. The service will initially be available to US PayPal account holders.

Early next year, PayPal plans to make it possible to pay those online retailers using crypto which is when many will consider adopting Bitcoin for the first time. The online retailers will be paid in whatever fiat currency they currently support. The value of a Bitcoin yesterday jumped over ten per cent to around NZ$19,500 on the back of the news.

Paxos will guarantee Paypal and users of the service a guaranteed exchange rate at the moment of the transaction, giving people security that they won't be stung by the often wild fluctuations in the value of cryptocurrencies.

For PayPal the move is the strongest endorsement yet of cryptocurrencies as a legitimate form of financial exchange after it withdrew from Facebook's Libra consortium. PayPal is already active in the digital wallet space with 350 million users of its Venmo wallet worldwide.

It's rival, Square already supports Bitcoin in its Cash app. But PayPal's use in the online world is orders of magnitude greater and the trust in the platform will help drive uptake of Bitcoin in particular.

The move could speed development of central government planning for cryptocurrencies as they seek to maintain their relevance and control in the digital world.

With shades of the DOJ vs Microsoft case of 1998, the action centres around whether Google has a monopoly on search capability and whether it abuses that position of power.

"Google is the gateway to the internet and a search advertising behemoth," says US Deputy Attorney General Jeff Rosen in the New Zealand Herald. "It has maintained its monopoly power through exclusionary practices that are harmful to competition."

When the DOJ took on Microsoft more than 20 years ago the case centred around Microsoft's inclusion of its web browser Internet Explorer as part of its operating system. The case was finally settled in 2001, ratified in 2004 and expired in 2007 and resulted in very little change in the way Microsoft worked - the suspicion is that this case also has little hope of changing anything about the way Google operates.

The DOJ is not calling for any specific remedies at this point - there is no call to break Alphabet up or to change the way Google itself operates. That may change as the case progresses, but for now this is widely seen more as a political move than a regulatory one.

US President Donald Trump has long accused Google of bias, claiming it promotes liberal content over conservative. Coming as it does only two weeks out from the presidential election, this show of strength might have more to do with vote winning than anything else - something that may play to Google's advantage if the election does not go Trump's way.

Big Blue will next year create a new publicly-listed entity that will run its managed IT infrastructure business, which currently generates around US$19 billion in annual sales, a quarter of IBM's overall business. 

Some of those sales are reflected in IBM's New Zealand business, which generated $258 million in revenue in 2019 and profit of $20 million.

It will be a lengthy and expensive separation process that will ultimately rack up an estimated US$2.5 billion in costs. But ultimately, the move is about jettisoning a shrinking IT business so IBM proper can focus on cloud computing and leveraging its Watson supercomputing capability and AI tools.

IBM has endured a decade of quarterly revenue declines as traditional IT projects move to the cloud and to IBM's competitors.

"IBM is laser-focused on the US$1 trillion hybrid-cloud opportunity," said IBM's recently appointed CEO, Arvind Krishna, who previously led the company's cloud computing division.

"Client buying needs for application and infrastructure services are diverging, while adoption of our hybrid cloud platform is accelerating," he added.

"Now is the right time to create two market-leading companies focused on what they do best. IBM will focus on its open hybrid cloud platform and AI capabilities."

The question is whether IBM has left its cloud play too late. It trails AWS and Microsoft as cloud providers and is seen as more of a niche player with expertise in hybrid cloud solutions - serving those organisations that have infrastructure and applications spread across on-premises equipment as well as cloud platforms.

Still, last year's US$34 billion acquisition by of Red Hat by IBM has given the company leadership in cloud software, particularly around Kubernetes and cloud-container management. It has an opportunity to leverage that capability while growing cloud services to rival AWS and Microsoft. 

We have seen these types of spin-offs before, such as with Hewlett Packard, which in 2004 revealed a plan to split into two entities HP and HPE respectively focused on the personal computer and printer businesses and technology services.

While the market received the move favourably as it was announced last Friday, IBM has a mountain to climb to gain market share in a competitive cloud computing market where other players such as Alibaba Cloud are also looking to increase their footprint.

IBM's bread and butter business in New Zealand is in managed IT infrastructure and major outsourced government and corporate IT projects. Its cloud business is relatively small compared to Microsoft with its Azure platform and market-leader AWS. With both of those companies recently investing in local infrastructure, Microsoft with an upcoming $100 million investment in data centres, IBM will need to leverage its hybrid cloud specialities and the Red Hat capabilities it now has.

A crucial factor is IBM's deep R&D capability that is producing advances in AI and quantum computing. That innovation could give Big Blue an edge against rivals as it seeks to leverage tools in the cloud.

One such effort will launch early next year in the form of a technology platform that will let businesses pay each other for goods and services, with the transactions taking place using digital currency and underpinned by blockchain-based distributed ledger technology.

PowerFinance, the Auckland fintech start-up behind the scheme, plans to start with a small number of large companies that make large transactions between them, chief executive Dave Corbett, told Interest.co.nz.

Smart money

He describes the "PowerDollar" as 'smart money'.

"Unlike today's traditional New Zealand currency, the built-in technology and compliance knows who is holding it, where it has been, where it is going and what contracts and regulations apply to its use, which helps prevent money laundering and fraud."

So far, so familiar. But the PowerDollar is also pegged to the value of the New Zealand dollar and is backed by real NZ dollars that are held as part of the IRD's tax pooling system as prepaid tax. This is money belonging to private companies and held by the government rather than being directly underpinned by our central bank as an official digital currency.

It is a rather novel approach and has led PowerFinance to lay claim to a world-first "sovereign backed digital currency". Still, the Inland Revenue Department was eager to point out this week that it hasn't partnered with PowerFinance and that they didn't consider the digital currency to be 'sovereign-backed'.

Dollar for dollar

PowerFinance, which plans to apply for a banking licence with the Reserve Bank, touts all the expected benefits of a blockchain-based currency system when it comes to verifying identity, recording transactions and employing smart contracts. 

But in real terms, those "Power Dollars" will also be used by companies to transact with customers. Payments for goods and services will be made and finance offered, with loans also repaid via the platform. Everything will happen in Power Dollars.

"Our purpose is enabling local businesses to offer financial services with lower costs, greater transparency and the ability to enhance both customer experience and revenue," says Corbett.

PowerFinance is backed by British financial venture capital company Centrality Ventures as well as local investors. 

Digital yuan

Meanwhile, China is forging ahead with its digital version of the yuan, which is indeed an official central bank digital currency. 

China's central bank claims that 1.1 billion yuan (US$162 million) worth of digital currency has been processed in pilot transactions that cover everything from bill payments, transport and government services.

The pilot had seen 113,300 personal digital wallets and about 8,800 corporate digital wallets opened. For years, China has led in digital payment technologies and sees digital currency as a way to streamline its massive financial system while stamping down on corruption and tax evasion. 

By early October, over 8,000 fires had burned over four million acres in California, four per cent of the states 100 million acres of land, in another record wildfire season. Over the weekend, we also got a taste of what could prove to be a summer of wildfires here, with fires destroying 20 homes and forcing people to evacuate at Lake Ōhau. Oher flare-ups keeping firefighters busy in the South Island and the far north and we have summer still to come.

Climate scientists suggest many areas of the world, including parts of New Zealand, will face the prospect of more intense wildfires as the climate warms, a problem exacerbated by land development being pushed further into wooded areas. That's a particular problem in California, the most populous state in the US, where a need for new land has seen towns and subdivisions established in areas that were previously wildlands.

Images of forest fires taken from the Firebird remote sensing satellites

Burned to the ground

President Trump attracted withering comments last week when he again maintained during a presidential debate with rival Joe Biden that California's wildfire woes could be blamed on poor "forest management" rather than the impacts of climate change.

"You know, at some point, you can't, every year, have hundreds of thousands of acres of land just burned to the ground," Trump said.

Many will have been in agreement about that, but there's less agreement about how to tackle the problem. Experts suggest land management practices do need to change. But with sizeable communities committed to living in dry, wooded areas and continuing urban sprawl, some are looking to technology to try and avoid more record-setting bush fires.

The Canberra-based Australian National University has teamed up with mobile operator Optus to develop a national system for detecting bushfires earlier and putting them out quickly. 

Fire-detecting satellites

The ANU-Optus Bushfire Research Centre of Excellence has kicked off a five-year programme to develop "autonomous ground-based and aerial fire detection system". 

The plan includes launching a "constellation of satellites" by 2022, which would be managed by ANU and help spot and track fires from space. 

Infrared cameras, drones, robotics, sensing systems and data analytics will also be harnessed to come up with better fire detection systems and ways of fighting bush fires.

"When it comes to fires, every second counts and there is no point detecting fires quickly if they cannot be extinguished quickly," ANU Vice-Chancellor Professor Brian Schmidt said this week.

"As we saw this season, these fires can cause massive destruction to our environment, homes and infrastructure and they cost lives."

Indeed, bushfires are expected to cost Australia A$30 billion over the next three decades. Modelling by ANU experts suggests early bushfire detection technology could reduce that impact by A$8.2 billion over the same period.  

"We hope to develop a system that can locate a fire within the first few minutes of ignition and extinguish it soon afterwards," added Schmidt. 

"ANU is designing and looking to build highly innovative water gliders with autopilots that will extinguish fires within minutes of them igniting."

A network of infra-red sensors

Optus will contribute mobile networking and satellite capability and expertise to the programme. An early project will involve the ACT Rural Fire Service in pilot putting infra-red sensor cameras on towers in bushfire-prone areas of the capital state.

The ANU-Optus partnership includes the appointment of a joint Chair for Bushfire Research and Innovation, along with a Research and Innovation fund. It is a welcome application of innovation to a pressing issue. But how well advanced is bushfire-fighting technology in general?

It is a fledgeling field of technology, but there are some promising projects underway. The University of San Diego's WIFIRE technology uses artificial intelligence to predict a wildfire's path in real-time allowing fire departments to more effectively deploy firefighters, trucks and aircraft. 

Much experimentation has been done with gliders for wildfire surveillance to help inform firefighting efforts. Gliders can exploit the updraft from forest fires to stay in the air for long periods of time, supplying valuable data to firefighters on the ground.

Bushfire-detecting satellites are already in place. The Firebird satellite programme, backed by the German government, has two remote-sensing satellites equipped with heat sensors in place tasked with detecting forest fires.

The Consumer Data Right was launched across the Tasman on 1 July, giving Australian consumers ownership of their banking, energy, phone and internet transactions, the right to control who can use it and the opportunity to transfer data to another provider.

The aim of the regime is to make data portability easier, increasing choice and competition, particularly in industry sectors where a company's use of data is used to lock in customer loyalty. Comparing offerings between providers, using real customer data, would also be easier.

But it is also designed to boost innovation. With a customer's data finally unlocked, the hope is that innovative new applications and platforms will spring up, merging data from numerous different sources - with the consumer's permission.

The Australian Budget will grant AU$28.5 million to roll out the CDR in the banking and energy sectors with a plan to extend it to mortgages and personal loans by the end of the year.

The CDR has had a low-key launch so far in Australia, with the Covid-19 pandemic requiring financial institutions to divert resources to more pressing issues. But the four major banks were ready for the July 1 introduction and numerous smaller financial institutions have been preparing their systems for CDR as well.

In contrast, New Zealand is a few years behind. The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment just last month issued a discussion paper on a data right and a call for submissions, which close on October 19.

Starting with banking

With the big four Aussie banks major players in our own market, a staged approach drawing on the work already done in Australia's financial sector would seem to make sense if a CDR was introduced here.

It's yet another area of regulation related to data and digital platforms where Australia is forging ahead, with the federal government and competition watchdog introducing a law to criminalise the spread of extremist content and creating a mandatory code of conduct for Google and Facebook to share advertising revenue with news publishers.

But Budget 2020 also reveals areas where our own efforts are far ahead. It includes A$256.6 million in funding to roll-out across government an opt-in digital identity that would allow Australians to verify their identity once to gain access to over 70 government services.

New Zealand's RealMe service has for years offered online verification and log-in for a range of government departments - for paying tax and renewing a passport to lodging resource consents and paying rates bills with local councils.

A digital log-in is already in place in Australia and used by 1.6 million Australians and 1.16 million businesses. The funding will extend the system's capabilities. 

"We need our businesses to be online, we need them to be digital businesses," Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Tuesday.

"In recent months we have seen through COVID a rapid acceleration produced by necessity of businesses really engaging and upgrading their digital capability. What we're announcing today, will build on that. It will strengthen it and it will accelerate it."

Australian Budget digital initiatives funding pre-announcement includes:

• $256.6 million to develop a Digital Identity system to enable more secure and convenient engagement with government services, and in future, the private sector. Digital identity is already being used by over 1.6 million Australians and 1.16 million businesses to access over 70 government services.
• A further $419.9 million to enable the full implementation of the Modernising Business Registers (MBR) program, allowing businesses to quickly view, update and maintain their business registry data in one location;
• A further $28.5 million to support the rollout of the Consumer Data Right to the banking and energy sectors, which is in addition to the more than $120 million already committed;
• $29.2 million to accelerate the rollout of 5G, including an initiative to invest in 5G commercial trials and testbeds in key industry sectors such as agriculture, mining, logistics and manufacturing.
• $22.2 million to support small business operators take advantage of digital technologies through an expansion of the Australian Small Business Advisory Service - Digital Solutions program, a Digital Readiness Assessment tool and a Digital Directors training package;
• $11.4 million for a new regulatory technology commercialisation initiative to improve compliance and directly support our digital technology firms;
• $9.6 million to support fintechs to export financial services and attract inward investment;
• $6.9 million for two blockchain pilots directed at reducing business compliance costs;
• $5.9 million to boost Australia's influence on international standards;
• $3.6 million towards mandating the adoption of electronic invoicing by 1 July 2022 for all Commonwealth government agencies to encourage greater adoption amongst businesses supplying to government and within their supply chains, and to consult on options for mandatory adoption of e-invoicing by businesses;
• $2.5 million to connect workers and small and medium-sized businesses to digital skills training;

All amounts in Australian dollars

Those two companies, famous respectively for satellite-launching rockets and carbon recycling technology, have both received investment funding valuing them at over the US$1 billion mark. That makes them "unicorns" in venture capital lingo.

They also have a long association with companies and individuals in stable known since 2014 as LevelTwo, which is now the key New Zealand tech incubator focused on deep tech start-ups and currently hosting companies such as Mint Innovation, BioConsortia, Dotterel and Pastoral Robotics.

Along with the new fund, which the investors expect to seed "20 to 30 deep tech startups across New Zealand", LevelTwo is adding and additional 25 per cent to its floor space to accommodate more lab and workshop space. That expansion is being supported by Ice House Ventures, Sir Stephen Tindall's investment K1W1 and other private investors.

Rocket Lab's launch pad on the Mahia Peninsula

Launch Lab

A new Launch Lab initiative to support "pre-incubation" entrepreneurs to prototype their ideas has also been created. It is being trialled with existing Level 2 residents, Zenno Astronautics, which is developing the world's first fuel-free satellite engines for sustainable space exploration, and Helico Bio, which is testing the growth of human insulin in plants. 

The investment and new fund arrive as more focus is put locally on deep tech development to create game-changing technology that has major export potential. The Government last year topped up funding for the technology incubator programme to the tune of $9 million, including $2 million for a HealthTech Activator initiative run by Callaghan Innovation to foster tech start-up development in the health space.

The Government last May also announced $75 million funding to revamp Callaghan Innovation's Gracefield Innovation Quarter, which houses scientific labs and R&D facilities. Growing investment appetite for deep tech is also likely to see some of the Government's $300 million Elevate fund support such companies.

The icehouse and LevelTwo tie-up was apparently inspired by Johnson & Johnson's JLABs, a largely US-based incubation and investment scheme supporting medtech and biotech companies. It has helped 450 companies secure $11.6 billion in funding in six years.

Inspired by an innovation giant

The success of similar partnerships overseas, such as Johnson & Johnson's JLABs, which has helped over 450 companies secure $11.6 billion in financing within six years, was an inspiration for Icehouse Ventures to join forces with LevelTwo and power up New Zealand's deep tech sector.

Prior to the partnership with Icehouse Ventures, LevelTwo has helped grow 25 companies, which hold around 30 patents and have raised around $20m in seed investment.

"The partnership with Icehouse Ventures bridges the gap for the growing number of deep tech entrepreneurs across the country who need access to specialised lab and testing facilities, technology investors and a supportive startup community," says Level 2 chief executive Imche Fourie.

Rocket Lab founder Peter Beck and Lanza Tech founder Dr Sean Simpson are both on the LevelTwo advisory board, so current residents of the tech incubator will be hoping that some of that unicorn dust rubs off on them. LevelTwo expects to make its first investments from the $10 million fund in the next few weeks.

The Scan&Go technology does away with the self check-out kiosk entirely with customers scanning items as they wander about the store and automatically paying for them digitally when they leave.

The only contact throughout the process is for fresh fruit and vegetables that needs to be weighed - a set of hi-tech scales use image recognition to detect what you place on the scales and will calculate the amount and add it to the shopping list. 

It essentially means that shoppers can bag up their purchases as they go, saving stopping off at the check-out area, a highly congested spot at peak times. The key driver at the moment is the physical distancing that accompanies pandemic lockdowns.

But Countdown says the momentum was already there for a better in-store shopping experience.

"Just like the online space, in-store customers are looking for innovation too," says Sally Copland, the supermarket clain's general manager of brand and CountdownX, its digital arm. 

The technology is being trialled at Countdown's Ponsonby store, which was apparently selected for the lunchtime crowd that it attracts. Customers exit the store through a dedicated lane and receive a QR-coded receipt, says Copland.

"At the moment there's an understandable focus on physical distancing and minimising contact, but even without that, the option to have your bags in the trolley as you shop reduces time spent shopping which is particularly handy for customers popping in and out, or if you're like me and juggling kids who tend to get restless once it's time to head for the checkout."

A wave of contactless shopping innovation

Countdown's solution has similarities to Amazon Go, the check-out free supermarket stores the e-commerce operator has been trialling where everything in store is done via a smartphone. Tech Blog reported in April on Auckland-based start-up IMAGR, which is also using computer vision and artificial intelligence to detect goods placed in a supermarket basket so that a shopping bill can automatically be generated without visiting a checkout kiosk.

This wave of innovation in contactless shopping driven by the Covid-19 pandemic has been mirrored around the world. US grocery store chains Price Chopper, Wegmans and Giant Eagle have all rolled out app-based contactless shopping systems that avoid a visit to a cashier on the way out.

With the US about to pass the inglorious threshold of 200,000 Covid deaths and a surge in numbers possible as the autumn weather cools, contactless shopping is set to become even more popular. Polling company Ipsos in June surveyed 2,000 American consumers, and found 62 per cent of them would stop shopping at a retailer not taking health and safety seriously.

Contactless shopping then may be set to become a major point of difference as people around the world continue to live with the virus and attempt to lessen their chances of falling victim to the virus.

Star of the show is the new Apple Watch 6 with a faster chip, retina display and added sensors that allows users to monitor blood oxygen levels by looking at the colour of your blood and an always-on altimeter so you know whether you're high or not. 

There's also a new Apple Watch SE edition that starts off at a lower price point for the budget conscious and which also boasts new design cues including different finishes and can be worn with any of the Watch bands, including the new Solo Loop which has no buckle.

The new Watches also get an OS upgrade and access to a new subscription service - Apple Fitness+ which includes a number of fitness regimes and which works in conjunction with apple's existing health and fitness capability. You can even play the videos on your Apple TV enabled device for the big screen experience while you work out.

Apple has also revamped its subscription services model and with Fitness+ joining Apple Music, Apple Arcade, Apple News and Apple TV+, the next logical step was to bundle it all together, which is exactly what Apple has done. Apple One brings all its subscription services together, along with iCloud storage, for a fixed rate each month, starting at $23.95 for individuals and $31.95 for a family subscription. Apple One will be available in New Zealand later this year.

The iPad range gets a dust up with the iPad Air getting an upgrade to the A14 chipset and the base model "new iPad" getting some upgrades to speed as well.

But the much rumoured iPhone 12 was not seen yet - no doubt it will get its own show at some point and is expected to be Apple's first 5G device. Nor were the "Apple AirTags" seen despite market expectation that the GPS tracking tags would make an appearance. 

Instead the event was dominated by the Watch and its capability. With the blood oxygen monitoring capability added to pulse and fitness tracker, Apple really is moving comfortably into the health and wellbeing monitoring role with the Watch family - something that will be added to when the new OS is deployed with its added sleep functionality and hand washing app.