Chorus to offer faster residential UFB within year

Chorus general manager, marketing and sales Victoria Crone says the 30/10 and 100/50 Mbps fibre services currently on sale on the UFB network are only the start. 

She says Chorus is: ”looking at offering a 200 Mbps service within a year”.

It doesn’t stop there. Crone says her company is already trialling a residential gigabit service and expects to offer that in the near future.

One day Chorus may offer a 10 Gbps fibre service

And then? She says: “Maybe a 10 Gbps pilot for home users”.

Chorus doesn’t offer UFB services directly to home users. Its contract with the government restricts it to wholesale connections only.

The company is building the fibre network in about 70 percent of the overall UFB coverage area, that’s essentially urban New Zealand. The company then sells wholesale fibre services to ISPs who in turn sell them to business and residential customers.

Faster rural broadband too

Crone also says New Zealand’s rural internet users can look forward to better speeds in the future. Chorus, along with Vodafone, is building the RBI (Rural broadband initiative) network which will fill in much of the country not served by the UFB network.

On paper RBI customers can expect to see connection speeds of at least 5 Mbps. In many cases new fibre to the node and fibre-connected fixed wireless towers will deliver rural services.

Crone says while today’s rural customers, who are moving from dial-up connections to broadband, will like the new services, they’ll quickly find it not fast enough for their needs. She says Chorus is already looking at plans to offer a better rural service. This may include VDSL technologies that squeeze faster broadband from the older copper telecoms network.

Although Crone wasn’t specific this might include extending the fibre footprint and offering faster wireless data technologies.