The Ultra-Fast Broadband Initiative is a New Zealand Government program of building fibre-to-the-home networks covering 80% of the population by 2022. It is a public–private partnership of the government with four companies with total investment of NZ$1.7 billion.
Contents
Targets
The Ultra-Fast Broadband project, announced in 2011, plans to provide speeds of at least 100Mbit/s downstream and 50Mbit/s upstream, though upgradable to 10 times that speed.
It aims to have optical fibre available to all schools and public hospitals, most private health facilities and most businesses by 2015. Urban and suburban residential areas have fibre deployed gradually, with new development areas being a high priority.
Initially, the plan was to have fibre within reach of 75% of the population by 2019 with an investment of $1.35 billion. In 2014, the government announced an increased funding of $152m to $210m, the target was expanded to 80%, and the finish date pushed out to 2022.
Partner companies
Crown Fibre Holdings Limited (CFH) is a Crown-owned company set up to manage the project. CFH has contracted four companies to deploy fibre network.
The main partner is Chorus, which won 70% of the roll out area. Chorus was part of incumbent telco Telecom but was split off into a separate company in order to participate in this project. CFH will invest NZ$929 million directly in Chorus with 50% being non-voting shares and 50% interest free loans.
There are also three Local Fibre Companies (LFC). These are 50% owned by Crown Fibre and 50% by the local electricity lines company or local government. They are:
Technology
The technology used is gigabit-capable passive optical network (GPON) for residential customers, and point to point for large businesses. Dark fibre is also available.
Chorus or the LFCs wholesale services to ISPs, who in turn offer services to their customers. There are 89 retail providers offering UFB services.
The contract between CFH and the fibre network companies specifies that there are to be wholesale residential plans of 30Mbit/s download with 10Mbit/s upload and 100Mbit/s download with 50Mbit/s upload.
The fibre network companies also offer other residential plans. The LFCs and Chorus in Dunedin offer a gigabit residential service of 1Gbit/s download and 500Mbit/s upload. Chorus offers residential plans of up to 200Mbit/s symmetrical in its other cities. Business gigabit services are available in all UFB areas. As of February 2015, unlimited UFB plans start from $79.
Customers must arrange the final connection to the UFB network with their ISP, who in turn arranges connection with the relevant fibre network company. The fibre network company then installs the fibre lead-in from the street to the customer's premises, the external termination point (ETP) and the optical network terminal (ONT). If the fibre lead-in needs to travel along shared rights of way or through cross-lease land, all affected neighbours must consent to the installation. The standard ONT provides four gigabit Ethernet ports and two ATA phone ports. It is also possible to have ONTs that provide WiFi, or radio over fiber.
For each area an ISP wishes to serve, it needs to put in a handover point and organize a backhaul link back to its core network. (There are 33 points of interconnect (POIs), one for each UFB candidate area.) Therefore, only a few ISPs offer nationwide UFB services, and the majority only focus in a few areas. This is different to DSL, where Chorus can deliver all of an ISP's customers nationwide to a single handover point, so ISPs can easily offer nationwide DSL service.
Progress
The initial UFB project consists of 33 areas. As of December 2015, the project is 60% complete, with fibre available to 875,207 households and businesses, of which 162,913 have connected.
History
The UFB project started as part of the National Party's 2008 election promise of an Ultra-Fast Broadband Initiative.
Initially, the Ultra-Fast Broadband network would not be subject to the regulations placed on other telecommunications companies by the Commerce Commission until 2020. After protests by telecommunications companies, consumer groups and opposition parties, the government allowed Crown Fibre Holdings to be regulated by the Commerce Commission. However, the government agreed to pay compensation to the partner companies if they lose money as a result of Commerce Commission regulation.
In 2015, the Government released a discussion document which sought views on how prices for UFB services should be set after 2019.