One NZ to retire HFC (cable) network

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stevec
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#3457640 1-Feb-2026 12:55

I totes agree with the replies and would like to add that the analogue phone came to the house in a twisted pair (maybe CAT 3?) that was part of the same cable drop that holds the coax/
Interesting thought for me is that our circa 2002 install didn't include this. At that stage Clear Communications (pre Telstra purchase) provided analouge phone using Chorus (aka Telecom at the time) lines, co-locating their equipment in a Telecom roadside cabinet.
There will be thousands of connections in this scenario. thanks for ask, @blacksand!

quickymart

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#3457647 1-Feb-2026 13:31

SteveC: Interesting thought for me is that our circa 2002 install didn't include this. At that stage Clear Communications (pre Telstra purchase) provided analouge phone using Chorus (aka Telecom at the time) lines, co-locating their equipment in a Telecom roadside cabinet.

Clear provided residential landline service in 2002? I don't think that's right - I was working there at the time and don't recall anything like that. Tolls, absolutely - but landline? Not to my recollection.

Clear - by that point Telstra Clear - did start to resell unbundled Telecom phone lines (Chorus didn't come along until 2007-8, becoming a separate company in 2011), but that reselling didn't happen until 2004-5.

lurker

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#3457695 1-Feb-2026 13:51

Haven't been contacted as yet but am currently doing some work on my property.
Can I run my own underground conduit to where I want the fibre to enter my house?
At present HFC is coming in overhead.
Fibre on the road is by the copper line which is long defunct for us, the conduit for that leads nowhere.
I want run a sweeping 25M conduit to the other side of the house and was hoping I might be able to do it myself to speed up the process when the email arrives

quickymart

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#3457697 1-Feb-2026 14:02

You can, but if your copper line enters your property via aerial, you'll need to pay for an overhead to underground conversion (or an OHUG).

DjShadow

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#3457712 1-Feb-2026 14:39

MaxineN:

quickymart:

At a guess, they provide(d) (cable) phone service?

HFC did in fact serve POTS as well. It was decommed a long time ago.

But again please do not touch it. Please put the cover back on... and get it professionally removed by Downer.

The POTS service in Wellington had a handy feature too, Telecom at the time had a Toll boundary between Wellington/Hutt and the Kapiti Coast but if you used Saturn (as it was called back then) it was a free call. I can only assume they carried those calls on the overhead backhaul you can still see on the Haywards Highway and Paekakariki Hill Road.

Behodar

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#3457716 1-Feb-2026 14:48

They did that in other places after merging with Clear. It was called Big Backyard and let you e.g. ring Tauranga for free from Whakatane.

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stevec
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#3457717 1-Feb-2026 14:50

quickymart:
SteveC: Interesting thought for me is that our circa 2002 install didn't include this. At that stage Clear Communications (pre Telstra purchase) provided analouge phone using Chorus (aka Telecom at the time) lines, co-locating their equipment in a Telecom roadside cabinet.

Clear provided residential landline service in 2002? I don't think that's right - I was working there at the time and don't recall anything like that. Tolls, absolutely - but landline? Not to my recollection.

Clear - by that point Telstra Clear - did start to resell unbundled Telecom phone lines (Chorus didn't come along until 2007-8, becoming a separate company in 2011), but that reselling didn't happen until 2004-5.

It isn't easy to find the history of Clear Communications landline service. The nearest I got was https://downtothewire.co.nz/exploding-fish-1990/index.html and following years, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clear_Communications Down to the Wire mentions the Internet side of the business, the Wikipedia page talks a lot about 0800 and toll bypass, but not Clear phone lines.
I had thought that we had a Clear Communications landline by the late '90s, but it could have just been tolls. We definitely had a TelstraClear landline before changing to Worldxchange VoIP in 2007.
Details are hazy. Perhaps I'll find time one day to put together a proposal that I could write a telephone addition to Down to the Wire which would cover where all these options came from and how they all eventually merged into one Internet connection! Geekzone history would be another place to research.

quickymart

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#3457726 1-Feb-2026 15:21

SteveC:

Details are hazy. Perhaps I'll find time one day to put together a proposal that I could write a telephone addition to Down to the Wire which would cover where all these options came from and how they all eventually merged into one Internet connection! Geekzone history would be another place to research.

I did some digging and found these:

https://archive.ph/7gmAk - Telstra Clear starts reselling Telecom landlines (from October 2004)

https://archive.ph/kOXJl - Telstra Clear had stopped reselling Telecom landlines by this point (March 2007 - ironically by this point, I was working at Telecom)

SteveC

stevec
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#3457732 1-Feb-2026 15:56

quickymart:
SteveC:

Details are hazy. Perhaps I'll find time one day to put together a proposal that I could write a telephone addition to Down to the Wire which would cover where all these options came from and how they all eventually merged into one Internet connection! Geekzone history would be another place to research.

I did some digging and found these:

https://archive.ph/7gmAk - Telstra Clear starts reselling Telecom landlines (from October 2004)

https://archive.ph/kOXJl - Telstra Clear had stopped reselling Telecom landlines by this point (March 2007 - ironically by this point, I was working at Telecom)

Kia ora @quickymart
It will take a lot of digging, including into the minds of various people (I wonder what Ernie Newman is up to ATM?) to put all this into a coherent whole.
We had a TelstraClear landline, which is obliquely referred to in the Herald article:
"But Telecom, which up until now has had a monopoly on residential local calling outside of Wellington and Christchurch, ..." We were one of the non-Telecom customers in Wellington.

antoniosk

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#3457733 1-Feb-2026 16:07

quickymart:

SteveC: Interesting thought for me is that our circa 2002 install didn't include this. At that stage Clear Communications (pre Telstra purchase) provided analouge phone using Chorus (aka Telecom at the time) lines, co-locating their equipment in a Telecom roadside cabinet.

Clear provided residential landline service in 2002? I don't think that's right - I was working there at the time and don't recall anything like that. Tolls, absolutely - but landline? Not to my recollection.

Clear - by that point Telstra Clear - did start to resell unbundled Telecom phone lines (Chorus didn't come along until 2007-8, becoming a separate company in 2011), but that reselling didn't happen until 2004-5.

Saturn rolled out a parallel residential pots network at the same time the HFC network was being deployed. That's why the service lead coming in from the street is a hybrid COAX for the cabletv/internet, and attached 2 copper pairs for up to 2 pots lines. It was standard practise to changeover the POTS from telecom to Saturn as part of the install, which would always get interesting because the Saturn network was TOO good compared to the low-power telecom network.

At great expense there was a DMS100 core switch in Wellington and Christchurch supporting this. When Telstra acquired Saturn, they started to build a business phone network, but very rapidly moved to acquiring Clear, who had already built a significant core network in the main cities but struggled to build service leads into buildings as there wasn't good access to ducting, positioning of network pits was frequently unhelpful and you couldn't cross the street etc. So never really got good traction.

This meant the mass of acquisitions meant the new outfit had 5 DMS's, enough to support most of Australasia.

By the time unbundling rolled round and the move to mass VOIP was possible, the demand for landline tech was pretty done and the world was about mobile - which lets face it, has been the way things have been going since 1993 :-)

________

Antoniosk

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#3457744 1-Feb-2026 16:55

antoniosk:

[It was standard practise to changeover the POTS from telecom to Saturn as part of the install, which would always get interesting because the Saturn network was TOO good compared to the low-power telecom network.

TOO good in what way?

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Rickles

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#3457747 1-Feb-2026 17:14

@Eva888 ... two green lights are good.

If technician coming to you, then let them do the connection etc. As said earlier, I waited until about 30 minutes before scheduled connection time, plugged my computer cable into ONT, and a few minutes later got three green lights ... internet connection then all go.

I recommend that you turn off the mesh Decos until satisfied internet feed OK, then fire them up one at a time ... easier to troubleshoot that way.

My extra devices all worked straightaway once restarted, so that the Deco router could issue fresh IP addresses to each one in turn.

Eva888

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#3457775 1-Feb-2026 18:28

Rickles:

@Eva888 ... two green lights are good.

If technician coming to you, then let them do the connection etc. As said earlier, I waited until about 30 minutes before scheduled connection time, plugged my computer cable into ONT, and a few minutes later got three green lights ... internet connection then all go.

I recommend that you turn off the mesh Decos until satisfied internet feed OK, then fire them up one at a time ... easier to troubleshoot that way.

My extra devices all worked straightaway once restarted, so that the Deco router could issue fresh IP addresses to each one in turn.

Thanks @Rickles, was busy so will give it a go on Monday. Figured better on a work day in case I need a hand. Sounds straightforward enough. No idea what the technician appointment is for. Maybe they will take away the HFC modem and cables?

The email said when I receive the new router to just plug it in and follow the prompts. I assume that means fibre is already connected. I wasn’t given a scheduled connection time though. Now am wondering if am meant to wait till the technician date. On the 16th.

Rickles

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#3457778 1-Feb-2026 18:52

>I assume that means fibre is already connected<

If you have two green lights, then yes fibre is connected and 'live' .... just like your electricity supply is connected and live.

And, similar to electricity, once you have chosen a power company to supply you, they provide 'their controlled supply' for you to turn on the lights. With internet, the fibre is also already there ready for your chosen ISP to turn on their specific supply.

It does sound as if OneNZ have decided to send you a technician to assist.

raytaylor

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#3457800 1-Feb-2026 21:26

quickymart:

SteveC: Interesting thought for me is that our circa 2002 install didn't include this. At that stage Clear Communications (pre Telstra purchase) provided analouge phone using Chorus (aka Telecom at the time) lines, co-locating their equipment in a Telecom roadside cabinet.

Clear provided residential landline service in 2002? I don't think that's right - I was working there at the time and don't recall anything like that. Tolls, absolutely - but landline? Not to my recollection.

Clear - by that point Telstra Clear - did start to resell unbundled Telecom phone lines (Chorus didn't come along until 2007-8, becoming a separate company in 2011), but that reselling didn't happen until 2004-5.

Clear had its own copper distribution through several CBD areas. I remember a few customers in Napier that couldnt get a telecom phone line because they only had telstra/clear cable coming in from the street. And they were provided ADSL off a 1RU pizza box dslam hanging in a cabinet down the road that each time it failed, the guy would have to go down and power cycle it.
This was great when telstra clear offered cheaper competitive pricing, though in time, telecom wholesale options brought the price down below telstra clear but it wasnt accessible without the huge civil works costs of getting a telecom copper lead in.

It wasnt until chorus UFB came about that these businesses could get an affordable installation of another provider without having to pay huge costs.

I am also pretty sure around the time that the government mandated unbundling, it was said in the media that Telstra/Clear had unbundled telecom's network already many years before.

In the cable areas this is interesting - i would have thought that they would be running the phone lines over the coax network though i'd love to know more about how they did this, if they did.

Ray Taylor

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