Enable: fibre to first Chch homes by June

Enable says the first Christchurch homes will be connected to fibre by June its Ultrafast Broadband (UFB) roll-out.

The company has also pledged that the UFB will lead to cheaper wholesale rates for business plans on its existing fibre network, and named its first retail ISP partners.

Council-owned Enable won the UFB contract for Christchurch, and is partnering Crown Fibre Holdings in the rollout.

Enable’s network currently covers around 80% of the city’s commercial district, passing around 7000 businesses.

Under the UFB, it has begun to expand its network.

Enable chief executive Steve Fuller said the 10-year UFB roll-out would be a key part of the Christchurch rollout.

“Fibre-to-the-home opens the opportunity for companies such as Google and Microsoft, TV networks and other technology innovators to create the exciting new applications that will run over our network,” Mr Fuller said.

“We are currently deploying UFB in Halswell and Aidanfield – and in commercial parts of Woolston, Hornby and Middleton. We will soon begin deployment to some residential parts of Papanui,” an Enable spokesman told NBR.

Mr Fuller told NBR the initial focus was on western suburbs unaffected by the quakes. 

Its network would cover 20,000 Christchurch homes and businesses by June, with a further 12,000 added by the end of the year. By the end of the decade, Enable's UFB rollout will pass 180,000 homes and businesses.

Speeds of up to 100Mbit/s (or roughly 10 times the speed of older copper lines) are promised, at “prices similar to today’s broadband.”

Last year, boutique Whangarei ISP Uber Group became the first internet service provider to reveal retail UFB pricing.

Uber’s plans start from $99 a month with a VoIP service for making phone calls over the internet, 150GB cap and 50Mbit/s speed.

Get ready for the stick
The Commerce Commission’s latest issues paper on demand for high speed internet services, released last week, made unhappy reading for broadband boosters as Chorus, Enable, Northpower and Ultrafast Fibre begin their rollouts under the public-private UFB scheme (which sees Crown Fibre Holdings chipping in $1.35 billion, to be matched or more by the four regional contract holders.).

Tapping Nielsen and Roy Morgan research, the "Content and Willingness to Pay" paper says three quarters of small to medium businesses are happy with today’s broadband.

And in the home market, most are willing only willing to pay $5 to $10 a month for high-speed internet.

That could be bad news for fibre uptake - or at least it would be in a world were providers were only relying on the carrot of competitively priced fibre to lure customers to upgrade from copper.

In reality, there will also be a stick (not mentioned least week). The legislation that provided for the UFB, and Telecom's split, also allowed for "averaging" of rural and urban copper pricing - a provision that kicks in in around 18 months.

There are far more urban homes than rural, and rural lines are more expensive. The net effect is that monthly bills for most on copper connections will rise by around $20 a month - providing a hefty negative incentive to make the move to fibre (a catch: some homes won't get the option of fibre until the end of this decade under the lengthy UFB roll-out, which prioritises businesses, schools and hospitals).