Ms Adams has today released the quarterly broadband update to September 2016, which highlights that nearly 50,000 connections were made last quarter.

At the end of September, 288,700 premises were connected out of a possible one million, and this increased to 300,000 by mid-October.

"Uptake nationwide has increased to 28.3 per cent," says Ms Adams.

"UFB is revolutionising New Zealand’s connectivity. We are seeing it transform communities and businesses, while bringing jobs to the regions.

"The overall deployment of UFB is five per cent ahead of schedule at over 69 per cent complete, with 13,342 new end users added to the market this quarter."

"I was pleased to confirm recently that UFB connections will be free throughout the build period."

In addition to UFB, the Rural Broadband Initiative (RBI) phase one has seen almost 300,000 rural premises able to access faster broadband of over five Megabits per second, with over 1000 rural schools able to access fibre speeds of up to 100 Megabits per second.

A Request for Proposals for the second phase of the RBI rollout was released in October, under which an additional $150 million is available to provide broadband to rural communities and businesses, and provide mobile coverage on State Highways and in tourism locations that currently have none.

Ms Adams says that deploying better broadband to as many places as possible is a key part of the Government’s focus on helping New Zealand businesses succeed.