NZ: Fibre connections up 54%
October 8, 2018
Nearly 600,000 New Zealand homes and businesses have high-speed fibre-optic Internet connections, a 54 per cent increase from 2017, according to findings from Stats NZ.
“Through Ultra-Fast Broadband fibre connections, more New Zealanders are now able to stream movies, play video games, and video-call one another in high-definition, without time lags or buffering,” noted business performance manager Laura O’Leary.
Nearly one in three broadband connections were fibre in 2018, compared with one in eight connections in 2016, the Internet Service Provider Survey shows.
The total number of fibre connections more than doubled in the past two years, to 598,000 at June 2018. From 2017, fibre connections increased by 209,000.
The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s latest Broadband deployment update shows 1.4 million homes and businesses can access fibre.
“This figure was around 1.2 million last year,” added O’Leary. “This shows the uptake of New Zealanders connecting to fibre is matching the increase in the availability to connect.”