It’s great to see the UFB project continue, with the Quarterly Broadband Deployment Update for December 2013 showing over 27% of premises passed to date.
The real question is how we can increase the pace of actual connections, currently at 1.5%. I’m trying to connect myself and can confirm that the anecdotes I’ve heard to date about the complexity and time are true. There is plenty of money to be made by private sector businesses who accelerate this adoption, and I look forward to seeing who the winners are.
Lance Wiggs 
Where are you based Lance? I would be happy to get your “plugged in” if you’re in one of our areas (Auckland/Hamilton/Tauranga/Wellington) as a bit of a test case.
Regards
Bruce
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Chorus *seem* to be making it hard for themselves to reach any kind of decent uptake milestone. And that covers not just the UFB project, but RBI too. There had been a promise from Chorus to rural communities that if a newly installed fibre optic cable was installed going past your driveway, you would be able to connect (after paying the appropriate fee–fair enough) to that cable. Great plan, especially for rural customers…
Only, the amount of fibre that Chorus are now making available is *incredibly* small.
For example, take my situation here in Golden Bay. Chorus spent a lot of time bringing a new fibre optic cable over the Takaka Hill from Motueka to Takaka. Then they dug in brand new fibre all the way out to Collingwood. Kilometres of new cable. Yet, search for “Golden Bay” on the Chorus coverage map here: http://www.chorus.co.nz/rural-broadband-initiative/fibre-in-rural-community/fibre-to-rural-communities-1, and I’d guess there is less than 500m of roadside that will actually be able to tap into the new fibre.
What an incredibly disappointing waste of opportunity.
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