Christchurch homes and businesses connect to fibre broadband

22 December 2015

104,000 greater Christchurch homes and businesses can now connect to fibre broadband

Local fibre company, Enable has now built its fibre broadband network to 104,000 homes and businesses in Christchurch, Waimakariri and Selwyn – almost 60 percent of its coverage area. This is an increase in network reach of almost 35,000 potential customers in the 2015 calendar year.

“Today our services are available to families in brand new subdivisions on the western edge of Rolleston, to schools across Rangiora in the north and to the Sumner business community in the far east – and to thousands and thousands of local individuals, businesses, schools, hospitals and community organisations in between,” says Enable CEO, Steve Fuller.

Enable has now reached the half-way mark in its original eight year deployment timeframe but has delivered fibre broadband capability to well more than half its local community.

Mr Fuller says, “The network build acceleration in the last 18 months represents a remarkable effort from the Enable build team and from our partner, Broadspectrum NZ (formerly Transfield Services NZ) – who have been working together under a Network Delivery Alliance (NDA) since early 2014.”

On top of possessing a wide reaching fibre broadband network, Enable will enter the Christmas period with almost 18,000 customers connected and enjoying its fibre broadband services.

“We’ve seen another step change in the number of people in our community making the switch to fibre broadband. We now receive over 2,000 orders per month – and will be connecting around 100 customers a day early in the New Year,” adds Mr Fuller.

Enable continues to see very strong uptake of fibre broadband services in the residential market.

“We’ve got communities like Rolleston above 45 percent uptake – soon every second house will be on fibre,” says Mr Fuller. “More and more kiwi families are consuming more and more online entertainment content – Netflix, Lightbox, etc. – and high quality, fibre broadband is now a necessity.”

Enable has also enjoyed very strong growth in the business market in the last six months – where fibre broadband orders have nearly doubled to almost 300 per month.

Mr Fuller says, “Growth in business uptake is incredibly satisfying to see. It is one area where our community can really benefit from the investment in fibre broadband – through businesses embracing the technology and online services to increase productivity or even transform business models to create new jobs.”

“Local businesses are really embracing cloud services – moving away from hardware in the office that costs money to manage and is vulnerable, and fibre connectivity is critical to this move. Other businesses are reaching or extending deeper into new markets with communication and collaboration tools that need good quality connectivity – such as sales demonstrations over video conference. There are a lot of opportunities for businesses once they are on fibre.”

Lindsay Crossen is Chair of the NDA and has an extensive background in large infrastructure and engineering projects. He is also extremely satisfied with the achievements of the alliance in 2015 – and believes it is and will continue to deliver outstanding results for Enable and its community.

“Last year Enable announced its plans to finish the network build a year early (by 31 December 2018) and this was dependent on the NDA becoming an extremely high-performing infrastructure deployment organisation. The performance of the NDA in deploying 720 kilometres of new network in a little over 18 months now places us ahead of this completion date,” says Mr Crossen.

Broadspectrum, Executive General Manager, Construction, Tim Sheridan – who has a NDA governance role – is also impressed with the performance of the Alliance. He says, “The NDA is achieving outstanding progress while maintaining high standards of safety and quality. One example is health and safety where the broader team of 400 people has performed very strongly – currently maintaining a lost time injury frequency rate of 1.0; many times lower than the industry benchmark.”

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