He says computer speed has doubled every 18 months for the last 15-20 years, data storage keeps doubling and optical fibre capacity has doubled every nine months. "Networking capability over fibre optics has grown beyond the capability of computers and we didn’t get to see any of that," he says.

Mr Borren, a high profile industry identity, is stepping down after 18 months of lobbying to get a high speed research network accepted by telecommunications carriers and adopted by the government.

His decision comes hot on the heels of an agreement with government to help fund the network now renamed the Advanced Network for Research and Education. Cabinet has agreed to support the proposed gigabit network linking 127 sites throughout the country in partnership with the Ministry of Research Science and Technology (Morst).

While Mr Borren is now confident 2004 is" the year of the advanced network" he warns we’re way behind most of the world. For example bioengineering professor Peter Hunter at Auckland University has developed mechanical models of the human heartbeat and needs to work with experts offshore as part of a virtual organisation. "The only thing holding him back is access to the network," says Mr Borren.

While research networks in the UK and Canada are capable of handling terabytes per second and the rest of the world is connected at gigabit/sec with Costa Rica and Fiji joining 48 other nations by the end of the year New Zealand hasn’t even begun work on its next generation internet.

Mr Borren says New Zealand needs to take part in weather, humidity and earthquake monitoring and multi-band videoconferencing. "An observatory in the US wanted to upgrade the Mt St John observatory take part in international astronomy experiment which uses 12 different wavebands collecting 200 terabytes of data nightly but we don’t yet have network to connect into that."

Tender will be called to establish a number of switches called ‘Gigapops’ or points of presence around the country. It’s planned to have fibre optic infrastructure is available to all relevant sites ‘within a reasonable timeframe’.

Mr Borren will be replaced at head of the NGI-NZ Society by Simon Riley, Director of Net Impact and current society secretary – Keith Newman