Back home, 2011 will be the year that companies, clients, and the public place even greater emphasis on professionalism in the delivery of ICT. Given that basically every other profession or vocation has a set of mandatory standards in place, adoption of New Zealand's ICT competency standard (ITCP) will become increasingly essential for credible senior professionals.

The concern, of course, is that if the ICT sector doesn't self-govern effectively the Government will most likely step in and do it instead, which would not be a good outcome for anyone.

Ultra-fast Broadband

UFB? Yawn. It's happening, we all know it, we love it, and it's essential for New Zealand. However that's just not going to change much in 2011. It's expected and accepted, so the Government's not going to get a whole lot of political oomph from UFB (unless they stuff it up), and no sane opposition is going to oppose it. There may well be staffing issues during rollout, and it will continue to gain headlines, but all and all there'll be no great changes here (other than possibly a bit of headline-catching but otherwise meaningless scrapping between providers).

Related to this, look for early signs of acquisition by Telecom buying market share, especially post-separation. I shouldn't mention names, and given it's no more than pure speculation I'll resist the urge to talk about the Big O... But you read it here first. Oops. I also suspect they'll find a willing seller in the current Government (and really, what's the Govt doing using taxpayer funds to run a commercially competitive ISP anyway?)