Rural Broadband and mobile coverage arrives at Waimana

Mobile coverage and broadband options just got better for residents, and visitors to Waimana as Vodafone lights up its newly built cell site under the Governments Rural Broadband Initiative (RBI).

A 25 metre monopole tower provides service to over 590 households in the Waimana area. The service, delivers not only mobile coverage, but wireless broadband via a high performance modem, adding a WiFi network into the home. Phone calls can also be made through this service by plugging an existing landline phone directly into the modem, removing the need for a landline connection. Customers can port their existing landline number to this new service.

There are six new RBI sites in the Whakatane District – along with Waimana, towers have already been built at Manawahe and Nukohou North. New towers are planned to be built at Whakatane West, Ruatoki and Thornton. Jointly these will provide new mobile coverage and wireless broadband for over 5000 homes and businesses. Vodafone will also be upgrading five of its existing sites around Whakatane to deliver the wireless broadband service to rural residents.

Vodafone’s Business Development Manager Andrew Taylor says the new cell sites bring greater options to the community, with households and businesses now having choice in broadband service.

“Switching to wireless broadband can provide a consistent and reliable service to residents It also offers the rural farming community the opportunity to increase production and monitoring through machine to machine automation,” he said.

An additional benefit of RBI for rural communities is the extension of mobile coverage to include 4,500km of rural New Zealand roads, which until now have been without.

“This is a massive benefit for farming districts like the Bay of Plenty, in dealing with emergencies, transport logistics, road safety and other real life circumstances that have been hampered by limited coverage,” said Taylor.

Under the five year RBI plan, Vodafone will upgrade 387 existing cell towers and build a further 154 new towers in rural areas all over New Zealand. The government is funding the civil construction costs of these new sites which are designed to accommodate Vodafone equipment and that of other mobile and wireless operators. 44 new sites have been built so far, and an additional 157 have been upgraded meaning new services for over 110,000 addresses in rural New Zealand.

Customers can find out if this service will be available at their address by checking online at

www.vodafone.co.nz/rural-broadband.

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