New Zealand’s Chorus reaches half a million fibre connections

New Zealand operator, Chorus has reached 500,000 ultra-fast broadband connections on its network. The company also revealed that it plans to reduce the wholesale price of its premium fibre offering.

This comes just seven months after the provider reached 400,000 fibre connections, something the company believes is indicative of a surge in demand during recent months. Comparatively, it took five years to connect the first 100,000 customers to fibre, which was achieved in 2015.

Chorus said that as more New Zealanders connect to fibre, consumers are moving towards higher specification plans to get the best experience. The reduction of its wholesale price for residential gigabit broadband services – from $65 to $60 a month initially, with a further reduction to $56 in mid-2020 – is designed to incentivise take-up. The company acknowledges that retailer service providers will add their own margin.

CEO Kate McKenzie explained: ‘There’s no sign of demand for fibre slowing down. As Chorus crosses the country laying fibre, more Kiwis can, and are, taking advantage of faster, more reliable broadband connections. As more content becomes available online, new devices are released to watch it on with higher video resolutions such as 4K (and soon 8K). What these numbers are overwhelmingly telling us is that as a nation our average data use is growing fast, and it will continue to grow faster in the coming years so being on the best available fibre connection is vital.’

Earlier this year, Chorus also collaborated with Nokia on an open access network infrastructure designed to help fulfil on-demand service for optical services (see Chorus chooses Nokia for new trial under ‘One Open Access Network Infrastructure’ vision).