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Whangarei leads New Zealand’s ultra-fast broadband future

Published on October 2^nd 2009, 12:47pm

There were no excuses about ‘low population density’ or the ‘topography’ of the region, as there were with the decision not to proceed with Freeview high definition terrestrial television in Northland.
Northpower seized the opportunity and in only 18 short months rapidly built over 100km of fibre-optic network using its powerlines infrastructure to fast track the rollout of ultra-fast broadband in the community. 

For this, Northpower has been nationally recognized by its telecommunication peers as a leader in building fibre-optic networks by winning the best next generation fibre-optic network award at the recent TUANZ Innovation awards this month.

On a recent tour of Northpower’s fibre-optic network facilities TUANZ CEO, Ernie Newman said:

“In all my travels around Asia and Europe looking at ‘world leading’ examples of metropolitan fibre, I’ve seen nothing to match this for simplicity, ingenuity, and especially cost-effectiveness.“

Earlier this year, Northpower formed an exclusive partnership with TelstraClear who agreed to spend $1 million to upgrade its Auckland to Whangarei fibre link bringing ultra-fast broadband to Whangarei.

Whangarei businesses were the first to benefit from this exclusive 12 month partnership with a suite of voice and data services to choose from at download and upload speeds of between 5 Megabits per second (Mbps) and 1 Gigabits per second (Gbps).

From February next year other service providers will be able to connect to Northpower’s fibre-optic network extending the present product offerings to include residential with typical speeds of 5 to 100 Mbps for home users. Although broadband products may be no cheaper in future, the main benefit is data speeds will be greatly increased.

Northpower’s vision is to extend its fibre-optic network to the wider community using part of the $1.5 billion in the Governments Broadband fund. This coverage will have the ability to deliver ‘triple play’ – not just voice and data, but true high definition television as well.

Until then, it must recover some of its initial investment by encouraging local businesses to connect to its existing fibre-optic network and where fibre isn’t immediately available, Northpower’s attitude is to enable them to connect as soon as possible.

Northpower has confirmed it will run its fibre-optic network very similar to that of its electricity distribution network taking customer calls locally and attending to faults the same day for both business and residential customers. This could offer future employment opportunities in the region.

Northpower’s leadership in this technology and its recent winning of the award by TUANZ for the best New Zealand next generation fibre-optic network has certainly positioned it, and Whangarei, to be early beneficiaries of the Government’s initiative.

Northpower cares about our community giving back through its sponsorship of the Northland Electricity Rescue Helicopter and Native Bird Recovery, and on power bills in the form of line charge holidays and distributions through the Northpower Electric Power Trust.

So let’s get behind Northpower and show our support in its bid to win the government contract to deliver ultra-fast broadband in Whangarei.

Find out more about our Fibre developments in the Fibre Network Section

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