Is there a legal definition or standard for minimum speeds and acceptable service for broadband here in New Zealand? I'm really curious to know what Chorus/ISPs are legally required to uphold.

In the USA the FCC had previously established at 4mbps/1mbps, but back around 2015 they increased that definition to 25/3mbps and have upheld that.

I'm wondering whether there is any such definition here and, as such, if we have any legal remedy to the terrible broadband service we receive on Waiheke Island?

You can stop reading here if you like...if you are interested in the rest of my situation then read on.

A little backstory...
We have had to live in internet purgatory at our part-time residence and business on Waiheke for the last 16 years. However, the last 4 months it has taken a turn for the worse...

Our location is only served by an outdated and decrepit copper loop that is literally falling apart.  Previously we could get only ADSL speeds and synch rates of around 7mpbs/1mbps.  That's excruciatingly slow for business purposes and pretty unbearable even for domestic use.

Last April when the big storms came through there was some kind of damage and line surge.  One of our neighbors had all their ADSL filters get zapped. I replaced mine and my modem, but still had constant drops and couldn't synch consistently above 4mbps.  Tickets were lodged with Chorus through our phone/internet provider and Chorus put in some kind of temp fix and has basically abandoned us. 

It's been 4 1/2 months now. 

I keep pressuring our ISP, but they seem utterly impotent in their ability to achieve any result.  We literally have a ticket that is still open and no one can even give me an answer on what the Chorus notes actually mean. I raised this again with my account manager and here is the response I received:

This case was linked to an FRE that has been open since 19.04.2018. A Temp Fix was put in place on 07.05.2018, with no ETR on the permanent fix.

Currently, the customer’s line is up at 4,252/1,111kbps since 15.08.2018 09:23. Erroring is low level and non-service affecting.

As you can imagine a 4.2mb sync yields less than 4mbps actual speeds due to network overhead.  Frankly, I consider that to be pretty 'service affecting'. 

So essentially, there's a temp fix, we lost 50% of the terrible speed we already had and Chorus has no plans to fix it....I guess....ever???   

Each time we have a phone problem with our analog lines (about 2x per year), the Chorus tech says it's because the pair we are on has become corroded/failed so they have to try and find a new pair. They even said they are running out of pairs now.  At this point, I'm waiting for our phone lines to just die and lose connectivity all together.

This is frustrating beyond belief and has literally reduced me to tears on numerous occasions.  We can't get 4G coverage even with an antenna so using a 4G RBI modem is not an option. There are some wireless ISP options, but latency, packet loss and connection stability are far from 100% and I have a business that simply cannot function if we have no phones and no internet.

So that's why I'm asking this question about legal definitions and whether I have any recourse or if Chorus can just abandon us entirely...