What you’ll pay for gigabit fibre

If you live in parts of New Zealand covered by the Ultrafast Broadband network, you can now download data at gigabit speeds. Most of the time that means services running at 1Gbps down and 500Mbps up.

Prices in Dunedin, winner of the Chorus Gigatown promotion, hover around $90 for an unlimited plan. In the rest of the country you can expect to pay around $120.

Unlimited gigabit fibre plans are a little more expensive than unlimited 100Mbps fibre plans, perhaps $10 to $2o a month extra depending on the service provider.

As the marketing people say: "affordable"

Either way, gigabit fibre won’t break the bank. And they are cheap by historic standards. Twenty years ago an ISDN line in Auckland, that’s a 128kbps dial-up connection, cost $50 a month plus $3 an hour.

Unless you have modest internet needs you should choose an unlimited data plan. If you have modest internet needs, what are you even doing looking at gigabit services?

Here we’ve listed the headline prices. That is, what you can expect to pay every month for an unlimited 1Gbps service. These may differ from the prices you see advertised because some service providers offer discounted starting rates for a limited period at the start of a 24 month contract.

Prices are lower in Dunedin thanks to the Gigatown promotion. Wicked Networks sells an unlimited gigabit plan in the city for $90 a month.

MyRepublic charges $60 for the first six months for customers signing a 24-month contract. Over the period of the contract the monthly fee works out at $105.

Orcon customers signing for 24 months get an Xbox One S.

There is a $50 installation fee at Bigpipe but no contracts.

Full Flavour is running a promotion where new customers pay only $100 a month for the first 12 months. There are no long-term contracts and installation is free.

Prices are complicated at 2degrees. A connection costs $95 a month, then you pay $45 for a 1Gbps “speed boost”. Customers signing for 24 months pay $60 a month for the first 12 months. The monthly cost over the full period of the contract works out at around $124 a month.

List updated to note different price structure for gigabit plans in Dunedin.