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Putting Chorus shoddy work complaints in perspective
New Zealand’s media was quick to report stories about poor Ultrafast Broadband installation work this week.
Stuff went first on Monday with Problems linger with Chorus ultra-fast broadband rollout.
Not
to be outdone, Tuesday’s The New Zealand Herald
reported:
Fibre-optic cables for ultra-fast broadband have been installed across fences and through gardens in some Auckland homes - leaving residents concerned.Internet users raised the issue with the Herald after discovering the cables scattered across their driveway, garden or taped to a fence.
The NZ Herald pictures came from Joe Thornley’s Howick home.
Thornley’s home snaps also showed up a day later at Radio New Zealand for Chorus responds to shoddy installation claims.
You could come away with the impression the UFB roll-out is one big botched job.
Sure there have been mishaps but the figures paint a different picture.
Radio New Zealand’s report
quotes two numbers from Chorus CEO Mark
Ratcliffe:
- “Chorus was doing 600 jobs a day”.
- …“getting 50 complaints a week about poor installations.”
Assuming Chorus works five days a week, that’s an error rate of around 1.5 percent or one in 60. A decent result for any large-scale public engineering project.
Given the spread out nature of New Zealand towns, physical challenges compared to say, rolling out broadband in Singapore, and dealing with often difficult access it looks like success, not failure.
Bill Bennett
Freelance journalist.
Auckland-based Bill Bennett writes technology and business stories that are directly relevant to New Zealand readers.
His emphasis is on telecommunications, but he also covers other aspects of technology and business. You can find his features in the New Zealand Herald and hear him regularly on RNZ Nine to Noon and the NZ Tech Podcast.
Bennett's The Download Weekly newsletter is published every Friday. You can sign up for it here.
If you want to support his work, you can make a donation to his PressPatron account.
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