Fibre To The Home for new subdivision

Sarah at TUANZ blogs:

‘Fibre Optic broadband’ isn’t usually a feature of real estate advertising, so when I saw these words flash across the TV screen during an advert for an up market subdivision it caught my eye. The owners of Kensington Properties who’ve just built in Orewa, north of Auckland, obviously think that Fibre To The Home (FTTH), and its promise of high-speed connectivity, will be a major selling point to prospective buyers. Particularly, as I understand, broadband has been something of a scarce commodity in that neck of the woods.

This is a very smart move by Kensington, for two reasons.  The first is that the cost is stuff all if you lay the fibre when developing the area in the first place. Around 85% of the cost of fibre is digging up the road and laying a trench. I’d have local bodies strongly encourage all new developments to lay fibre – it is inevitable that it will be as necessary in the not too distant future as a copper phone line and an electricity supply.

The second smart thing is that it will add real value to a property.  Shit for a decent fibre connection to one’s home, I’d sell off a small child for that.  Actually one of my medium term projects is to convince my body corporate to get fibre laid to our apartment block, and then have wireless on each floor.  With 88 tenants, you’d probably only need a 20% uptake rate to make it economic – in fact I reckon you could get it cheaper than the wholesale price for normal broadband.