More comment coming out from the Beehive on the news that three Local Fibre Companies will be offering a 1 Gigabit product for residential users on the Ultra-Fast Broadband network.
The announcement last week that came from Local Fibre Companies Enable, Northpower Fibre and Ultrafast Fibre was welcomed by Communications Minister Amy Adams after she was advised that these three fibre network operators will roll out a new Residential Only BS2a 1G/500Mbps service from 1 October 2016.
“Since the Government launched the UFB initiative in 2009, broadband has become faster and cheaper, and those benefits have been made increasingly available to New Zealanders. Today’s announcement is the next big step forward to even faster speeds,” says Ms Adams.
“Faster speeds means people can use the internet in ways that were never possible before, creating more innovation and productivity from the Government’s $1.35 billion investment into the UFB.
“The 1Gbps speeds puts us on par with many leading markets, including South Korea, Japan, Singapore and parts of the United States. This means our exporters can compete in the global digital economy, creating jobs and higher wages.”
The ultrafast broadband network in New Zealand has been designed to handle the demands of faster speeds and higher capacity. The newly announced superfast broadband speeds of 1Gbps (Gigabit per second – the download speed meaurment) announced by the LFC’s are ten times faster than the Government’s benchmark policy product of 100 Mbps from the original UFB tender.
The new plans are in response to the strong demand for the faster UFB plans already available. Between March and June 2016, 87 per cent of new residential connections were for 100 Megabits per second or more. Nine per cent of new residential connections are already for 200Mbps or above.
“There are already over 3700 active residential 1 Gigabit services in New Zealand, and I expect to this grow with the residential gigabit to be available in a third of all 33 UFB candidate areas.
“LFCs have announced wholesale products. I encourage the industry to collaborate to offer gigabit plans at retail level on attractive terms,” says Ms Adams.
Why get Ultrafast Fibre Broadband? The Benefits of 1Gbps:
The high-speed internet service of 1Gbps means:
· Instantly access online movies, music and games
· Easily connect to the cloud and high-definition videoconferencing services
· Download 25 songs in a second, a TV show in four seconds or any high-definition movie within 34 seconds
· Download a 8000 word processing documents in a second
· Restore 1 terabyte hard drive in 2.5 hours.
The 1Gbps service will be available in Whangarei, Hamilton, Cambridge, Te Awamutu, Tokoroa, Tauranga, New Plymouth, Hawera, Whanganui, Christchurch (including Rolleston, Lincoln and other satellite towns) and Rangiora, as well as Dunedin where is it already available through Chorus’s “Gigatown” initiative. In total this is 10 of the original 33 candidate areas for UFB1.
