quickymart:

 

Even if you're in rural Waikanae there should be copper available there.

 

First off apologies for my tongue in cheek response.

In terms of the original post in this thread, Spark seems to have moved forward with C band service in more rural areas than expected.  Waikanae is not big and just a couple of months ago the closest 5G was from Voda down in Parapararumu, ironically being quite good in the Spark retail outlet there. Now Spark has much of Kapiti lit up which is a good thing.

Years ago, in this rural part of Waikanae I had patchy 256 kbps ADSL. Telecom wouldn't guarantee service and the only modem that would work after trying quite a few was the Nokia M10.  However, as more and more people took up ADSL closer to the exchange the signal-to-noise dropped to the point where ADSL wouldn't work anymore. Then with a new DSLAM located much closer in a roadside cabinet, ADSL2+ became possible at speeds of a few megabits but eventually that too slowly died as the directly buried cables got wet, etc. A friendly Downer guy used to just about live on our road patching up the cable.  I ended up installing a 6.8 km Ubiquiti 5.8 GHz microwave shot to a friend's beach house that was able to be connected by fibre and that now provides roughly 450 Mbps downloads while we share the monthly connection cost. Great speed and very cost effective.

Now according to Spark's address finder there is no option here other than 4G.  The Chorus finder offers VDSL but for fibre it's "Custom Install" which is going to be expensive over several km of public road with no ducts.  For reference there is no town water here and no sewer.

So back on topic, a 5G rural broadband service that delivers good pings (I consider sub 10ms good and 2ms excellent - LTE doesn't cut it) would be interesting but we're not there yet.  The RCG work has delivered real benefits, two areas I know of (Otaki Gorge) and the new site being built near Baker for parts of the Remutaka Forest Park are game changers.