Internet in New Zealand

Internet In New Zealand

In New Zealand, the major fixed line telecommunications company, Chorus, owns most of the infrastructure. Telecom New Zealand was, for a long time, the only provider of digital subscriber lines (DSL), which they wholesaled to many of Telecom's "competitors", with varying speeds and download limits. This was altered after "local loop unbundling" legislation was introduced allowing Vodafone, Orcon and other operators to install their own dslams for last mile connections.

Download speeds in New Zealand range from 64 kbit/s download to a maximum of 100 Mbit/s download depending on the distance from the exchange, quality of the telephone line and equipment used in the exchange and internet service, ADSL, VDSL or fibre. Most households achieve an average speed between 1 Mbit/s and 10 Mbit/s per line. Internet service providers (ISPs) commonly limit speeds to 64 kbit/s after going over an allocated allowance, while others charge per gigabyte over a set limit. Some ISPs including Slingshot offer a traffic managed 'unlimited' plan to avoid these limitations . International connection is provided by the Southern Cross Cable. Currently, though the New Zealand Government funded Ultra Fast Broadband (UFB) initiative, fibre optic cables are being laid in the streets of many New Zealand cities and towns, providing speeds of up to 100 Mbit/s download and 50 Mbit/s upload for similar prices to the much slower and more inconsistent ADSL and VDSL provided through copper broadband cables. This initiative aims to provide these speeds to 75% of New Zealanders by 2019.