No, the line stats from your modem - speed tests are fairly meaningless.

The cabinet you're connected to isn't a fibre fed cabinet so the speeds will vary based on congestion. Buy your neighbours beer to run an Ethernet cable :)

quickymart:

 

No, the line stats from your modem - speed tests are fairly meaningless.

 

Righto, will see what I can do there. Can't access my modem via the router so will have to change things around and connect directly to the modem and have a nosey.

You should be able to access it from any machine on your network - what brand/model is it?

quickymart:

 

You should be able to access it from any machine on your network - what brand/model is it?

 

Draytek vigor2710 bridged to a Netgear R7000, bit of a retarded set up but for some reason through various roommates that's how it has ended up. Will have more of a nosey tomorrow afternoon.

myfullflavour: We are based in Tauranga. Send me a PM with your address and I'll get you a quote.

OP I marked this one as an answer because you've got the attention of a local ISP who's willing to step up and help get you some data.  I do hope that I read, by the end of the day, that you've made contact and that you're well on the path to improved access.

OK I've been through this little fun and games. If the Chorus Rural Broadband page show Rural Fibre as available at your address you need to email the rural broadband team and ask for a reference number. You then give this to your ISP and ask them to give it back to Chorus, who will then ask the ISP what the reference number is for. This will go on for possibly a couple of months. If you spend enough time chasing it around you will eventually get your ISP/Chorus to schedule a Fibre Site inspection. My install (aerial cable, 190 metres distance) was quoted originally at $9000 to fibre back to the exchange. When I finally got the details of the quote out of Chorus (apparently you're not allowed to see what the quote actually covers even tho' they want you to pay for it due to it's 'commercially sensitive' nature), I asked them to have another go at it. I told them that the fibre was at the gate they went back and re-did the quote down to $900 (this also took several phone-calls). Finally, nearly 18 months after the fibre was put in the ground outside the gate (and 17 months after I kicked the process off) I was running at 200/20 on my lovely fibre connection. And to top it all off, because we're semi-rural in Auckland and I suspect also because Spark had no idea how to actually deal with Rural Fibre, our connection was 're-classified' as UFB (even tho' we are NOT in a UFB area and do not show on any maps as Fibre capable) and the install was not charged for as it was less than 200m distance from the boundary. W00t. Spark's terms and costs for their UFB plans and packages apply to Rural Broadband connections, except for the requirement to pay for the install from the Fibre on the road to the House.

Moral of the story. Stubbornness and a small amount of knowledge about how the system works sometime pays off.

Also be prepared to explain to every single person you contact what exactly Rural Fibre is, because I suspect not a soul outside of Chorus' Rural Broadband Team know what it actually is. For reference it is a 'consumer access' fibre line sometimes/usually/commonly now run alongside 'back-haul' fibre used to upgrade a cabinet. If you are lucky enough to live on that stretch of road and are happy to pay for the install from the road to the house then you can get fibre in the middle of no-where...

dolbyjr:

 

OK I've been through this little fun and games. If the Chorus Rural Broadband page show Rural Fibre as available at your address you need to email the rural broadband team and ask for a reference number. You then give this to your ISP and ask them to give it back to Chorus, who will then ask the ISP what the reference number is for. This will go on for possibly a couple of months. If you spend enough time chasing it around you will eventually get your ISP/Chorus to schedule a Fibre Site inspection. My install (aerial cable, 190 metres distance) was quoted originally at $9000 to fibre back to the exchange. When I finally got the details of the quote out of Chorus (apparently you're not allowed to see what the quote actually covers even tho' they want you to pay for it due to it's 'commercially sensitive' nature), I asked them to have another go at it. I told them that the fibre was at the gate they went back and re-did the quote down to $900 (this also took several phone-calls). Finally, nearly 18 months after the fibre was put in the ground outside the gate (and 17 months after I kicked the process off) I was running at 200/20 on my lovely fibre connection. And to top it all off, because we're semi-rural in Auckland and I suspect also because Spark had no idea how to actually deal with Rural Fibre, our connection was 're-classified' as UFB (even tho' we are NOT in a UFB area and do not show on any maps as Fibre capable) and the install was not charged for as it was less than 200m distance from the boundary. W00t. Spark's terms and costs for their UFB plans and packages apply to Rural Broadband connections, except for the requirement to pay for the install from the Fibre on the road to the House.

 

This is not the process - it's going to take a lot longer if you don't follow proper process which is the RSP managing the entire process.

As for not paying any install - that's a very lucky score!

dolbyjr:

 

OK I've been through this little fun and games. If the Chorus Rural Broadband page show Rural Fibre as available at your address you need to email the rural broadband team and ask for a reference number. You then give this to your ISP and ask them to give it back to Chorus, who will then ask the ISP what the reference number is for. This will go on for possibly a couple of months. If you spend enough time chasing it around you will eventually get your ISP/Chorus to schedule a Fibre Site inspection. My install (aerial cable, 190 metres distance) was quoted originally at $9000 to fibre back to the exchange. When I finally got the details of the quote out of Chorus (apparently you're not allowed to see what the quote actually covers even tho' they want you to pay for it due to it's 'commercially sensitive' nature), I asked them to have another go at it. I told them that the fibre was at the gate they went back and re-did the quote down to $900 (this also took several phone-calls). Finally, nearly 18 months after the fibre was put in the ground outside the gate (and 17 months after I kicked the process off) I was running at 200/20 on my lovely fibre connection. And to top it all off, because we're semi-rural in Auckland and I suspect also because Spark had no idea how to actually deal with Rural Fibre, our connection was 're-classified' as UFB (even tho' we are NOT in a UFB area and do not show on any maps as Fibre capable) and the install was not charged for as it was less than 200m distance from the boundary. W00t. Spark's terms and costs for their UFB plans and packages apply to Rural Broadband connections, except for the requirement to pay for the install from the Fibre on the road to the House.

 

Moral of the story. Stubbornness and a small amount of knowledge about how the system works sometime pays off.

 

Also be prepared to explain to every single person you contact what exactly Rural Fibre is, because I suspect not a soul outside of Chorus' Rural Broadband Team know what it actually is. For reference it is a 'consumer access' fibre line sometimes/usually/commonly now run alongside 'back-haul' fibre used to upgrade a cabinet. If you are lucky enough to live on that stretch of road and are happy to pay for the install from the road to the house then you can get fibre in the middle of no-where...

 

Lol, that's not the process at all, sounds like you contacted all the wrong people, I've had dozens of these go past my desk with quotes varying from $900 to over $200k.

You contact an RSP, say you want fibre at a rural premise and you want a quote, they fire this off to Chorus for NGA on Application to a certain team, estimate 48 hour turnaround from a local construction planner, get a rough quote. This basically depends on population density and rural fibre being available, I've seen installs done for sub-1k because they're in a reasonably small township, but meets the criteria.

RSP submits order as per BAU but quotes the NGA on Application reference from proces above, goes for design, get a final quote which the RSP may/may not accept depending on the result. Could take a month or so.

Assuming they accept, goes for build, may take 6-8 weeks and they will bring a fibre duct to your house.

Goes back to Chorus for making standard against their network, records get updated etc and your house is now a standard Chorus fibre available address just like anyone else may be. At this point, ANY RSP will see this address as UFB available. You then get a tech to come out and install your ONT as per BAU process.

All in all, should take around 3 months. Worth mentioning, yes, no one is obliged to provide you a breakdown of costs and your RSP may put margin on it.

I tried to follow the 'ask your RSP process' initially. When I approached my RSP asking for Rural Fibre after noting on Chorus' website that Rural Fibre was available at my address, the RSP told me in no uncertain terms that there was NO fibre at my address, it was unlikely that there ever would be, and also that they hadn't even heard of a product called Rural Fibre. This was the same story from several staff members there. That is why I went back to the Chorus website and made contact with the Rural Broadband team via the website.

So to those who say 'follow the correct process', how can you if the RSP has not provided their staff with the relevant information? This situation may well have changed since I started my journey over two years ago, that the process I followed was the one that worked for me at the time.

As to the suggestion that there is no obligation to provide details of what makes up a quote for an installation, I was asked to pay in the order of $9000 without any explanation of what this provided apart from 'this is the cost of fibre to your place'. If I got a quote from a tradesman for a job, I'd at least like to see a breakdown of the costs: hardware, labour, ancillaries, etc... Particularly for an amount of that magnitude. Clearly the information was there because it was noted verbally to me after pushing hard for any details at all of what the quote was for that it covered 'Fibre back to the exchange'. Had I accepted that quote, would they have just carried on with the job all the way back to the exchange? It was only after I had that information that I was able to ask for the quote to be checked again pointing out that the Rural Fibre ran past my gate.. The next quote came back at $900 which seemed reasonable [to me] for spanning 180 metres aerially and then 5 metres underground to the dwelling.

I also lost several months by asking the guy when he came to do the site inspection about the costs of running fibre to a new house that we have planned at the bottom of the property. Apparently this was taken to mean that we were planning to subdivide our lifestyle block, and the order was sent to some other team responsible for subdivisions... It took several attempts to get the order out of that black whole. So the 'process' is apparently pretty easily put off course.

So to those who say 'follow the process', I would point out that there seems to be very little information about the actual process and what to do when the order gets 'diverted'. Perhaps more transparency about the process, the costs, and where you actually are in the process (or out of in my case) wouldn't go amiss. I am happy to concede that things are working better now for those very select few of us who can access Rural Fibre, but seeing threads like this with quotes in the 5 figure range doesn't give me much hope.

I would've been more than happy to pay the $900 install BTW. However $9000 for what I believed was running around 180 metres of fibre along some poles (which I had spent several days clearing and chainsawing around to ensure easy access on a flat well gravelled driveway), and hooking it up at each end, seemed to be a little high. I'm pleased I pushed back on that to ensure that at least they were quoting based on the correct information.

Who's the RSP? Spark? I have a feeling they don't do rural fibre (or NGA requests).

Yup, Spark. Maybe that's why it was such an effort, but I am indeed on Rural Fibre according to Chorus' website and my RSP is Spark. It pays to be stubborn apparently...