New Zealand operator Chorus has reached an agreement with Crown Fibre Holdings to extend its UFB rollout to a further 169 areas extending from Taipa–Mangonui in Northland to Bluff in Southland. This will make fibre available to an additional 200,000 homes and businesses beyond the 1.1 million customers in Chorus’ existing UFB rollout areas.
Chorus reports that, at end-2016, the uptake of fibre across Chorus’ current UFB deployment areas stood at 32 percent, with areas completed earlier in the programme seeing uptake surpassing 40 percent.
In 2011, when the first phase of UFB was announced, the average household used about 13 gigabytes of internet data per month. This has grown to more than 120 gigabytes a month today with nearly half of all broadband customers having made the move to unlimited data plans, chorus also said.
The second phase of the UFB rollout is scheduled for launch in July 2017 and complete by December 2024. Chorus estimates the cost of the UFB2 communal network will range between NZD 370 million to NZD 410 million. The cost to connect each of the 203,000 potential customers within this footprint is estimated to average NZD 1,500 to NZD 1,700.
