News Release

25 August 2011

Porirua Mayor Welcomes Fast Fibre Rollout

Porirua Mayor Nick Leggett has welcomed the decision by Chorus to prioritise the rollout of Ultra-Fast Broadband through fibre-to-the-home to large parts of Porirua.

Chorus and Crown Fibre Holdings announced today that they will be rolling out ultra fast broadband in six areas across the Wellington region in the first year of deployment.

"Mana, Camborne, Papakowhai, large parts of Aotea and almost all of Whitby - areas of our city with some of the highest work-from-home rates in New Zealand - will have Ultra Fast Broadband rolled out in year one," Mayor Leggett says.

"This is fantastic news for our City and it means Porirua had jumped ahead of some Wellington City suburbs in the queue. People in Papakowhai, Whitby and Camborne will have blistering speeds while Karori, Tawa and Kelburn are still using the old broadband networks," said Mayor Leggett.

"Residents in these suburbs will be able to connect to internet speeds of up to 100mbps from their living room, which will enable people to work from home and transform educational opportunities for our kids. This is brilliant news for our City," said Mayor Leggett.

He says the rollout will be great for local business and it will also complement existing fibre in Porirua.

"The Council sees real value in developing local broadband networks. That's why we set up Smartlinx3 with Upper and Lower Hutt councils a few years ago to lay fibre in our own cities and connect them together.

"This new initiative by Chorus, part funded by the government, will help us plug some of the gaps. We will be talking to Chorus about how we can get broadband into the areas that are still missing out."

Smartlinx3 majority owner iwi consortium Torotoro Waea has recently announced plans to extend its own network in the region and nationwide.

"We're hoping that a combination of services from Chorus, Smartlinx3 and other providers will help us deliver benefits to all our residents," says Mayor Leggett.

Residents can check whether their house is covered by typing in their address on the Chorus map at http://www.chorus.co.nz/ch-ournetwork.

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