Chorus : rsquo; free upgrade to 50Mbps for entry level fibre customers

Published 02/12/2016

Chorus' free upgrade to 50Mbps for entry level fibre customers

In celebration of its fifth birthday as a standalone company, Chorus has today announced a free upgrade for the 85,000 residential fibre broadband customers on Chorus' entry-level 30Mbps plan, increasing it to 50Mbps.

Chorus will work with the broadband retailers to migrate their customers as quickly as possible to the new plan speed. It is expected the migration would complete early in the New Year, with all customers on a Chorus entry level fibre plan then seeing their downstream speed increase to 50Mbps. The 50Mbps plan will then become Chorus' entry level fibre plan.

Fibre broadband customers will not need to do anything to take advantage of the free upgrade. Chorus will work with the retailers behind-the-scenes at the network layer to manage the transition. Existing fibre-compatible modems will already support the new plan speeds.

The five years since the establishment of Chorus has seen monumental changes in broadband performance across New Zealand. For instance, in 2011,

• the average downstream speed on the Chorus network was less than 10Mbps, it's now nearly 35Mbps
• unlimited broadband plans - those without restrictive data caps - were almost non-existent, today uncapped plans make up more than half of all residential broadband plans
• a typical home on Chorus' network used 20GB a month of internet data, today, with the widespread take up of HD online TV services like Netflix, this has increased to more than 120GB

Not everyone has managed to keep up with the change of pace in broadband improvements over the last five years. While about 400,000 have moved to the best possible technology - either VDSL or fibre - Chorus analysis shows approximately another 400,000 connections could be on better broadband today.

Chorus CEO Mark Ratcliffe said the time was right for the next step change in broadband performance across New Zealand.

'Five years ago it was hard to predict the impact fibre broadband would have on our connected lives at home and in work. While we knew fibre was set to be a game changer, at the time the entry level 30Mbps plan looked more than ample.

'Today, New Zealand has the highest rate of growth in fibre uptake in the world and a voracious appetite for data. The changes brought on by how we now expect to lead our connected lives led Chorus in its decision to reset the baseline of what we should expect from our broadband.'

Ends.

For more information please contact:

Steve Pettigrew
027 258 6257
steve.pettigrew@chorus.co.nz