Enable remains committed to Christchurch during lockdown

Enable has announced it is maintaining critical fibre broadband services during New Zealand's lockdown period, which is proposed to last for one month, and is focused on supporting the Christchurch community.

The Christchurch fibre broadband network provider states it is 'fully prepared' to continue to deliver essential services to the greater Christchurch community during the Government's COVID-19 Alert Level 4.

Enable serves the greater Christchurch area including towns in Waimakariri and Selwyn districts. Its customers include businesses and organisations that are deemed essential services and will continue to operate to support the community.

Furthermore, Enable serves thousands of local families that will be using the internet to work, study, connect with loved ones and be entertained during their time at home.

Enable CEO Steve Fuller says, "We've been working for several weeks to ensure our business is ready for a community-wide lockdown. We are a lifeline utility and essential service provider which means our business needs to remain open through this time to serve our community.

Fuller says, "Our business continuity plans have been activated and we have moved our business to a working from home model in support of our key priority of keeping our community and our people safe.

"We can operate all functions of our organisation under this new model with added safety precautions. We are fully focused on continuity of service and are actively monitoring our network performance and will prioritise fault repairs during this time.

He says, "We have plenty of network capacity in place, so we want to reassure customers that our network can handle multiple people using their broadband at the same time. Customers may want to consider upgrading the speed of their service with their internet provider so speed isn't a barrier to them in these difficult times.

According to Fuller, there has been a spike in interest in connecting to fibre broadband via the company's website. Fuller also states that Enable is focused on respecting the Alert Level 4.

According to a statement, the company is prioritising connections that are required in support of the provision of essential services to our community and will deliver these services in a safe way, including to those customers who have no internet access or need better connectivity to allow them to work from home and learn online for our children.

"The safety and wellbeing of our community is our number one priority and we have introduced new controls for all our ongoing work carried out by our contract partners, in line with Government recommendations for essential businesses," he says.

"We are only undertaking essential field activity work during the COVID-19 Level 4 Alert period. We are conscious of the need to support our community to play their role to stop the spread of COVID-19 by staying at home - and a fast, reliable fibre broadband internet connection is a big part of this and we need to balance this with what is essential now.

Fuller says, "Enable is an organisation that is entirely focussed on and owned by the Christchurch community, and we are passionate about our city.

"We will do everything in our power to support our community to make the very best of this difficult situation, to beat COVID-19 as quickly as we can.