Speedier Broadband Sooner for Some

By HOYLE, Jon

WELLINGTON city will get Telecom upgrades to higher broadband speeds by the end of 2010, but work in Porirua, Upper Hutt and Petone will start and finish later.

Work on upgrading the ageing copper network to increase broadband speeds over Telecom’s phone lines is already under way in an area of Christchurch centred on the suburb of New Brighton, and in Auckland suburb Pt Chevalier, Kerikeri, central Tauranga and Matamata, east of Hamilton.

In Wellington, work will begin in Thorndon, Wadestown and Ngaio in July. Most of the city is expected to completed by late 2010.

Work in Lower Hutt will start later in the year, but in Upper Hutt, Porirua and Petone it is not due to begin till 2010.

The chief executive of Telecom’s network business Chorus, Mark Ratcliffe, said it would take three months from the start of installation of new roadside cabinets for customers to get faster broadband.

Most of the current work was surveying cabinet sites and obtaining resource consents, he said.

The work is part of Telecom’s Next Generation Network, which the company promises will give 80 per cent of the country in towns of 500 or more phone line broadband speeds of between 10 and 20 megabits per second.

Speeds via copper lines vary widely but can be less than one megabit per second.

Boosting the speed involves reducing the length of the copper lines used to deliver broadband to the home by shifting exchange equipment to roadside cabinets (cabinetisation), and upgrading the network technology.

Spokeswoman Melanie Marshall said copper lines to residences needed to be no more than 2.5 kilometres long to achieve the intended speeds.

In Waikato, cabinetisation is under way in Cambridge and will start in Hamilton in July.

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