quickymart:

 

One wants to stay with Spark

 

Misguided loyalty to a corporation who does not care in the slightest

If not wanting to do Starlink then hopefully Amazon Leo isn’t too far away

noroad:

 

quickymart:

 

One wants to stay with Spark

 

 

Misguided loyalty to a corporation who does not care in the slightest

 

A lot of older people still feel that way though, ie, change is too difficult. (For the record, I agree with you, but it's harder trying to get an older person to change their mind).

One potential difficulty with moving from Spark is if you want to keep your xtra.co.nz email address.  You can pay Spark to provide just xtra email, but I think it works out at about $150 per year. 

Spark are strong in rural areas.

My cell is with Spark and I have no reason to change.

Their headline prices are expensive but when team discounts are factored in this can drop quite a bit.

Update: one relative has ordered Starlink, and the other is now thinking seriously about it.

Can't recommend Netspeed highly enough.  We've used them for years (we're rural) for internet and just gone to VOiP since our copper was taken away.  They still answer enquiries promptly and in a friendly, helpful way.

adwadw:

 

Netspeed

 

Doesn't appear to be available where they are 😕

tim0001:

 

One potential difficulty with moving from Spark is if you want to keep your xtra.co.nz email address.  You can pay Spark to provide just xtra email, but I think it works out at about $150 per year. 

 

People should have moved off that a long time ago but understand it takes time, a small business is still getting critical emails 2 years after moving them to 365

MichaelNZ:

 

I wouldn't automatically rule out fibre.

 

While there has been plenty of talk about huge installation quotes for some people - this is not universal. I have seen some quotes for way more then I expected, and others come in at less then I thought, and with the later I invariably say "take it". 

 

Its $100k+ for the first customer in the area to get the OLT installed in the exchange subsequent installs are cheaper, it's all well and good to have raw fiber running past the house but if there is no GPON equipment at the other end its useless.

Yeh your options really are WBB. You can buy an external Antenna... this will greatly fix throughput problems. Also test to see which network has the best coverage for you.

Or Starlink. I think the whole I dont like musk thing is quite childish.

There might be some P2P Wireless broadband providers in your area too.

nztim:

 

Its $100k+ for the first customer in the area to get the OLT installed in the exchange subsequent installs are cheaper, 

 

This has been ruled out as an option in a previous post but for the benefit of others reading this:

The great thing about PON is "area" is flexible.

We have a local exchange building but our UFB is serviced from Dannevirke over 20km away.

By way of explanation, PON is not limited to 20km, rather, it has a limit of 20km max between the closest and furthest ONT's. How Chorus gets around this is to install a dedicated linecard to feed that connection(s).

Whether the linecard is charged for I don't know. Chorus quotes are very vague. But our NoA connection was nowhere near $100k.

nztim:

 

it's all well and good to have raw fiber running past the house but if there is no GPON equipment at the other end its useless.

 

I don't know exactly how Chorus works out their price and its very vague but reading into quotes I have seen and those discussed with industry peers - having fibre running past can make a tangible difference because it may mean existing conduit, pits, and fibre distribution hardware. So while the UFB is technically a separate fibre from whatever other plant they have, there are still shared resources.

And this held true for our install.

They dug up our street to the existing fibre, cut into the conduit, installed a pit and splitter at that location, and then ran the UFB fibre through this conduit which was originally installed to feed a remote VDSL cabinet.

I recently did a quote for someone else who also fortuitously had a VDSL cabinet feed running past their place. This quote came in under $30k whereas another quote - for a similar distance - which involved having to dig (but no OLT to be clear) was well into the $1xx range.

MichaelNZ:

 

I recently did a quote for someone else who also fortuitously had a VDSL cabinet feed running past their place. This quote came in under $30k whereas another quote - for a similar distance - which involved having to dig (but no OLT to be clear) was well into the $1xx range.

 

So if there is no OLT within 20KM then you are up for 100s of 1000s

nztim:

 

So if there is no OLT within 20KM then you are up for 100s of 1000s

 

In that case there was a general rollout within a km but Chorus would have to dig around 700m including past a train track and that really pushed the price up.

Based on our own NoA install and others I have seen the price is based on what is involved to get UFB to the address and the distance to the OLT is less important.

We did not pay for the 21km to the Dannevirke exchange. We were quoted - and paid - for 230m which is the distance between our place and a fibre junction pit which was installed late 2025 for the RCG cellsite. There are other people in the forum in very similar situations who can confirm this scenario. Hopefully they will notice the thread.

They dug approx 70m in the street for us and the rest of the run was through their existing conduit which was feeding a VDSL cabinet.

So while we had to pay to get UFB we did have a favourable location. Others more or less so and this is how the spread of costs happen.

I do not work for Chorus so nothing I say is official but just based on observation.

nztim:

 

MichaelNZ:

 

I recently did a quote for someone else who also fortuitously had a VDSL cabinet feed running past their place. This quote came in under $30k whereas another quote - for a similar distance - which involved having to dig (but no OLT to be clear) was well into the $1xx range.

 

 

So if there is no OLT within 20KM then you are up for 100s of 1000s

 

 

 

Chorus can use longer range optics on the OLT PON port to get well above 20km. The bigger problem IMO is that a lot of rural cables have a low fibre count, often only 6F which are usually already in use for 1 or 2 ISAM cabinets + the SDH ring for carrying voice traffic around. These fibres should be freed up as the copper network is shutdown.