UFB a game-changer for Whangarei businesses

5 November, 2013

UFB a game-changer for Whangarei businesses

Business owners in Whangarei's CBD are being encouraged to connect to Northpower Fibre's ultra-fast broadband network.

The fastest broadband speeds in Northland are now available to more than 600 CBD businesses - with download speeds up to 100Mbps and upload speeds up to 50Mbps. Business packages are available from numerous retail service providers on the Northpower Fibre network.

The announcement comes just days after Northpower was presented with a major international broadband accolade - the 2013 Calix Innovation Award for ‘Fibre Transformation’ - at a ceremony in Las Vegas, USA.

Many businesses on the Northpower Fibre Whangarei network have reported efficiency lifts of over 20% since switching to fibre a little over a year ago.

The Director of Whangarei business Plus Charted Accountants, Brent Martin, says businesses not on fibre broadband are missing a great opportunity for growth.

"I have seen what it has done for my business and it is hard to comprehend how we operated without fibre," says Mr Martin.

"It saves an immense amount of time because staff are not waiting for pages to open like when we had a copper connection. It has also allowed us to operate in the cloud and make cloud services available for clients to log into. Anyone serious about growing their business and improving profitability would be foolish not to be on fibre broadband."

Northpower's Network General Manager Graham Dawson says fibre is a game-changer for Whangarei.

"I would strongly encourage local businesses to get on board - once they are on fibre they will wonder how they survived without it. We haven't even scratched the surface of the capabilities of fibre broadband," says Mr Dawson.

The Northpower Fibre CBD build has been the most complex and time-consuming part of the Whangarei UFB build, taking just over a year.

Mr Dawson says he is excited for local businesses at the prospect of what they will gain from ultra-fast fibre broadband, which he labels as the future of communications.

"We currently have the highest customer connection rate of any UFB build in New Zealand and I believe that will continue to increase once our network is completed in April because our fibre specialists will then be able to focus solely on customer connections instead of the physical infrastructure construction.

Northpower Fibre CEO Darren Mason says more than 1000 Whangarei residents and businesses are connected to the network.

“Nearly 90% of the network is complete and well over 17,000 people can now leave their old copper broadband behind and get on board the fibre experience. That's exciting for the region as many people are beginning to realise," says Mr Mason.

“Demand for more online content is only going to increase and we want Whangarei to be the leading city in New Zealand for high speed fibre broadband.”

Retail service providers on the Northpower Fibre Network can be found at www.northpowerfibre.co.nz

Northpower is a Northland owned electricity distribution company with 50,000 consumers and 54, 900 ICPs connected to its network over an area of 5,700 square kilometres across the Whangarei and Kaipara Districts in Northland. Northpower owns more than 3700km of high voltage electricity lines (237km underground) and almost 2100km of low voltage lines (643km underground) in Kaipara and Whangarei Districts, along with the 50kV transmission lines between Dargaville and Maungatapere. It is also one of New Zealand’s leading fibre network companies. www.northpower.com

ENDS

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