Chorus' largest-ever performance upgrade for New Zealand fibre customers is now complete, the company says.
Residential customers on the wholesaler's 100 Mbps fibre plan can now access triple the download speed from available retailers while increasing the upload speed five-fold from 20 Mbps to 100 Mbps.
Chorus says the big fibre boost is expected to catapult New Zealand up the world's broadband rankings as customers take advantage of the upgrade through their chosen retailer.
Chorus projections show the country could move into the global top ten for the fastest broadband by early 2022. In October, New Zealand sat at 24th position, above the UK at 50th and Australia at 54th.
Kiwi businesses have also benefited with 'Business Evolve' 100/100 Mbps plans and 'Small Business Fibre' 100/100 Mbps plans moving to download and upload speeds of 300/300 Mbps and 500/500 Mbps, respectively.
"We've been ten years building our share of the fibre network and we're nearly done," says Chorus chief executive officer JB Rousselot.
"When we finish, New Zealand will have one of the most extensive fibre networks in the world," he says.
"This performance upgrade builds on our purpose to ensure that New Zealanders have access to the best internet connectivity," Rousselot says.
"Once adopted, New Zealand should achieve an impressive ranking for fixed broadband connectivity, and we expect to realise this early in the new year, once all retailers have been able to make the performance improvement available to their customers."
As technology evolves rapidly, Rousselot says Chorus is committed to making sure that Kiwis continue to reap the benefit of fast connectivity.
"This is just the beginning of what fibre can do - the capacity and speeds are virtually limitless, and we intend to roll out further upgrades and options at a wholesale level," he says.
More than two-thirds of Kiwi households have connected to fibre, with the figure even higher in Auckland at 76 per cent. Twenty-two per cent of Chorus' fibre connections are now gigabit services.
The rankings for fixed broadband are from Ookla's Speedtest Global Index for October 2021, which measure the median download speed by country.
Chorus' big fibre boost will increase broadband speeds for more than 550,000 households and 50,000 businesses. Download speeds for customers on Chorus' wholesale 100 Mbps fibre services are tripling to 300 Mbps and upload speeds will increase five-fold from 20 Mbps to 100 Mbps. Businesses using Chorus's wholesale 'Business Evolve' 100/100 Mbps plans and 'Small Business Fibre' 100/100 Mbps plans will move to download and upload speeds of 300/300 Mbps and 500/500 Mbps, respectively. There is no wholesale cost increase for this performance upgrade.
