First Hamilton premise connected to ultrafast broadband

MEDIA RELEASE
For immediate release

11 June 2012

First Hamilton premise connected to ultrafast broadband

Telecommunications provider, Lightwire, announced today that it is the first provider to connect a Hamilton premise to the city’s new ultrafast broadband network.

“Milfos International is the first business in Hamilton to be connected to ultrafast broadband on the new local fibre network currently under construction across the city.

“We’ve worked with Milfos to understand their business and put together a flexible package that works for the way they manage and transfer data. Once Milfos was ready to go, the connection process was simple and the service is running without a hitch,” says Lightwire Business Development Manager, Jeremy Barker.

Milfos Internal Technical Support Team Leader, Brett Schwarz, says the company is already experiencing some early benefits.

“The first thing we’ve noticed is the incredibly rapid upstream speeds. This allows us to send documents to our staff, partners and customers around the world with incredible ease. Having a good upstream speed is also going to allow us to make full use of cloud computing.

“We’ve also noticed that many more people can make use of our broadband connection by uploading or downloading large amounts of data at once. With our old 5Mbps connection, it was easy for one person to hog the line, so to speak, and slow things down for everyone.

“We’re confident we’ll see a more reliable service than we’ve had in the past. We should have less downtime overnight, which has been a common occurrence in the past. This is important to Milfos as we have staff and customers around the world, so our system is busy 24/7,” explains Mr Schwarz.

Hamilton’s first businesses are now able to receive ultrafast broadband from retailers who offer the service off the city’s new local fibre network. The city’s first residential customers will be able to start connecting in July.

Additional Hamilton businesses and homes will be able to progressively receive ultrafast broadband as fibre is laid in front of their premises over the next four years.

Jeremy Barker says in addition to connecting businesses, Lightwire will soon be connecting Hamilton’s first residential customers.

“In about a month’s time, we’ll be ready to connect residential premises where the new local fibre network has passed. People can give us a call now to find out about the service and get on a waiting list,” he says.

Lightwire is a Hamilton-based technology company that specialises in providing innovative broadband services and was spun out of the University of Waikato in 2006. Since then, it has been developing wireless-based Internet services (under its no8wireless brand) and fibre-based internet services for both the urban and rural markets. Lightwire offers ultrafast broadband packages for both businesses and residential customers.

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