The Aussies are jealous

News.com.au reports:

The Australian taxpayer funded company tasked with the monumental job of building our national broadband network is fond of saying that the final product will make us a world leader in broadband capability, but the Kiwis might have something to say about that.

On Friday last week New Zealand fixed-line telco company Chorus announced it will extend its 1Gbps fibre broadband service across the entirety of its Ultra-Fast Broadband (UFB) footprint beginning in October.

Chorus already has more than 4000 fibre connections in Dunedin capable of such speeds but will now offer the “maximum speed the network electronics allows today” to customers across the country, the company said.

Chorus CEO Mark Ratcliffe said by “championing gigabit residential and business services” New Zealand will be “catapulted up the league tables of broadband speed rankings”.

The current average download speeds across the Chorus network is 30.5 megabits per second (Mbps) but the upgrade will allow users to achieve download speeds approaching 1000Mbps and uploads of up to 500Mbps.

Comparatively, many Australians who have signed up to the NBN currently receive download speeds within the range of 25Mbps to a possible maximum of 100 Mbps. Full fibre connections are expected to make up about 20 per cent of the completed NBN rollout meaning retailers will one day be able to offer 1Gbps speeds to the lucky few.

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