New Zealand fibre build on home stretch

Communications Minister Simon Bridges says the first phase of the government's Ultra-Fast Broadband programme is three-quarters complete. The project is running ahead of schedule.

Chorus is two-thirds of the way through its build. The company with the largest share of UFB contracts is rolling out fibre in Auckland and Wellington among other cities.

Nick Woodward, Chorus customer service general manager, says the company is, on average, now adding one new fibre connection per minute. 

1.1 million able to connect

With the build now finished in 22 cities and towns, more than 1.1 million homes and businesses can now access fibre. 

Bridges says: “We’re fast-moving towards our goal of 85 percent of New Zealanders having access to fibre by the end of 2024. And for vastly-improved broadband to be available in New Zealand’s rural communities.”

He says the UFB programme is one of the New Zealand's biggest infrastructure projects.

Average speeds jump 40 percent

To underline the impact of the fibre build Bridges notes Akamai’s latest State of the Internet Report shows New Zealand's average broadband speeds jumped 40 percent in the last year.  

Another measure comes from Chorus which says monthly data consumption has passed 200GB in many places. Woodward says the average Auckland fibre connection got through 277GB of data in April 2017, that's up from 245GB a year earlier. 

So far, 35 percent of those able to connect to fibre have done so. This number is good when compared to fibre uptake elsewhere in the world. It is also ahead of Chorus's expectations. However, Woodward says uptake could be higher if people had better information about the technology.

Early finish for Enable fibre build 

Enable Networks says it expects to finish its fibre build by the end of next year. That's a year ahead of schedule. 

The company has the UFB contract for Christchurch and surrounding centres. 

It began rolling out fibre in late 2011 and planned to finish at the end of 2019. Today about 83 percent of the 180,000 homes and businesses in the area have fibre access. 

Enable CEO Steve Fuller puts the early finish down to innovation. He says: "We’ve continued to innovate in our deployment methods throughout our build. We're always looking to improve efficiency. 

"Our network is all underground. We’ve introduced shallow trenching and innovative ground cutting technology, alongside underground drilling. Plus, we’ve introduced real-time production planning for every day of operation to optimise the build. These new approaches helped us accelerate our build and, importantly, reduce the amount of time we are in people’s streets.”

 Fuller says people in Christchurch either already have, or soon will have, access to the best broadband connectivity. He says: "People across our community are no longer limited by their broadband connection. "

Industry News:

Spark plans Nokia path to 5G

Spark wants New Zealand to be one of the first countries with a 5G mobile network. It plans to get there some time around 2020. But first there is some ground work. The company will spend the next two years upgrading its core and back networks.  

This week it announced Nokia will be its technology partner for the project. The pair have a three-year agreement. Work will start with the upgrade of the mobile transport infrastructure. 

Spark will use Nokia's IP Mobile Anyhaul technology. It says this will address capacity issues. There has been a ten-fold increase in traffic since Spark introduced wireless broadband. 

Vodafone, Sky cut sports deal

Vodafone has a new deal with Sky TV giving broadband subscribers Sky Sport free for 12 months. To get free Sky Sport, customers must select Vodafone's unlimited broadband plan with the basic Sky service. 

 There's irony here. It comes after the Commerce Commission turned down the pair's $3.5 billion merger proposal. One reason for stopping the deal was a fear it would allow bundling deals that other carriers couldn't match. Deals like free Sky Sport for broadband subscribers. 

Gartner says WiFi, Bluetooth will dominate home networks

In what must have been an easy forecast to make, research group Gartner says Bluetooth and WiFi will become the home network standard. You'd have to look long and hard to find any alternatives in New Zealand homes other than Ethernet. 

Gartner says Bluetooth and WiFi will beat ZigBee, Thread, Sigfox and LoRa. All names that are unknown to New Zealand consumers (although see the next story). 

The key is scale. Bluetooth and WiFi are a global standard and equipment makers already work with them. The others don't get a look-in.  

Spark demos internet-of-farming-things at Fieldays

Fieldays used to be about tractors and fertiliser. The Rural Broadband Initiative changed that. Today telcos are some of the biggest exhibitors. 

This year Spark used the event to show its Connecting Farms pilot. The project marries the company's 4G mobile with low-power wide-area networking. The pilot is an on-farm WiFi mesh network. This links back to the internet through Spark's fixed wireless broadband. 

With it, farmers get real time information about conditions on the farm. They use sensors linked using LoRaWAN. This is one of a range of technologies made for long range, low power low data rate IoT applications. Another organisation, KotahiNet, has its own LoRaWAN network, while others use Sigfox. 

Spark teamed with NIWA, Farmlands and Ballance Agri-Nutrients for a pilot covering 40 farms in Matamata-Piako. A second trial with 20 South Island farms is coming soon.

Vocus talks turnaround as take-over looms

At an investor-day meeting Vocus CEO Geoff Horth confirmed earlier guidance that the company is on target to earn a profit of between A$160 and $165 million. Revenue is expected to be A$1.8 billion, that’s down from earlier forecasts of A$1.9 billion.  

A A$3.3 billion big from private equity group Kohlberg Kravis and Roberts is still on the table. If that succeeds, parts of the company, including the New Zealand business are likely to stripped out.  

Spark wraps marketing automation firm Ubiquity Software into Qrious

Spark NZ has bought Ubiquity Software, an Auckland-based marketing automation firm. It says it will wrap the business into Spark Venture's Qrious unit. The companies did not say how much the deal is worth. 

Qrious is a analytics business set up for the big data era. Spark identified Qrious as having fast growth in its recent financial results.  

The business uses location data from Spark's mobile network among other sources. This gives its customers insight into consumer behaviour. Adding Ubiquity will help it expand into the fast-growing data-driven marketing sector. 

Hawaiki cable ready to roll

Until the ships sail a submarine cable is little more than a PowerPoint presentation and a sheaf of bank documents. Hawaiki Cable will pass that important milestone in the next few weeks.  

It says contractors are loading the first 7000 kilometres of cable onto a ship in New Hampshire. 

The submarine cable will link New Zealand and Australia to mainland USA via Hawaii. When it opens, it will mean New Zealand no longer relies on a single company for direct trans-Pacific connections. 

 Hawaiki's cable is due to start operating about this time next year. Rival Southern Cross has said it plans an extra cable which should be online by 2019. 

Cabling the Cooks

Radio New Zealand reports the government will contribute $15 million to help pay for the planned Manatua submarine cable. The cable, mainly funded by the French government, will connect Samoa and French Polynesia with links to Niue and the Cook Islands.