CFH delighted with Ultra Fast Broadband progress

CFH delighted with Ultra Fast Broadband progress

8 August 2013

Chair of Crown Fibre Holdings (CFH) Simon Allen is delighted with the progress of the Ultra-Fast Broadband initiative.

Echoing today’s remarks by the Minister for Communications and Information Technology Amy Adams, Mr Allen said it was fantastic to see the UFB initiative had exceeded its deployment targets. “Around 20% of the project is now complete,” he added.

“Compared to last year, our partners Chorus, Northpower, Enable and UltraFast Fibre really ramped up their build efforts and as a result had completed the delivery of UFB past more than 229,600 premises by 30 June. The pace of build has now reached the level required to achieve the policy goal of 75% population coverage by the end of 2019. We’re grateful to our partners for their continued efforts and we congratulate the many planners, field staff and operational teams which contributed to this success,” said Mr Allen.

“We’re very pleased to see that just over half of urban businesses now have access to UFB, while 67% of schools in UFB areas are now able to connect to the network”, said Graham Mitchell, CFH Chief Executive Officer.

New connections in the last quarter exceeded the total added in the previous three quarters, showing interest in UFB is accelerating. Take-up of UFB is occurring across a wide range of business sectors, from cafes and panel beaters, to surveyors and disability services providers.

“I expect uptake to build as the network adds further scale, driven by increased marketing by Retail Service Providers and exciting new applications,” said Mr Mitchell. “The UFB network is approaching critical mass, and it will become ever more attractive both to the ICT industry and broadband users.”

“The Internet is becoming more and more important to New Zealanders in our daily lives. We can be confident we are building the next generation infrastructure we increasingly need,” said Mr Allen. “I look forward to seeing more and more New Zealanders connecting to UFB and taking advantage of its many benefits.”

ENDS

© Scoop Media