I’ve been waiting for broadband for about one and a half years now. Just this past month Chorus has built two new green cabinets close to where I live. From what I’ve read on the spread sheets located on their website, what the technicians have told me who were working on the box and what their RBI-mapping tool says they should be operational anywhere from now until the end of the month.

These two new cabinets have been built alongside our current cabinets, which are Conklins. I actually used to have broadband from one of these Conklins, but then I moved house (to a different address down the same street) and unfortunately we lost it. We were placed at the back of the port-waiter list. Which because of the Conklins is incredibly long.

Now these two cabinets are not in the same location. They are about 900m~ apart. The first cabinet is what I assume to be a Whisper cabinet. I’m not really sure though. I’ve attached a picture that I found on the web which it looks pretty much identical. The second cabinet looks similar to the smaller cabinet in the attached picture. But I think it is longer. If need be I can take pictures of the actual cabinets I’m talking about.

I live down Kitewaho road, which is up the scenic drive out the back of Swanson. The first cabinet MSY/BD is 1 < x < 1.5 KM from my house. The second cabinet MSY/CZ is <1KM (assuming they will keep the labels the old Conklins had). However the one closer to my house is just slightly past the top of my road. I guess this means that if it was to service my street the copper wire would have to run back across the road and down my street. I’m not sure if it’s laid out like that? Perhaps it only goes forward, down the main road.

Back when I had broadband at my old house we were on the MSY/BD Conklin and not the MSY/CZ one. When these new cabinets become operational is it possible to choose which cabinet you are served off? Or do you just get put on one, and can’t change. Naturally it would probably be better to be served off the closer cabinet. But because the closer cabinet is smaller, it looks like a different type of cabinet; perhaps the speeds it delivers are not as great? Therefore since both cabinets are relatively close to my premises might it be better to be served from the larger cabinet?

Another thing I’d like to enquire about is VDSL2. I believe I read somewhere in the past that you need to be <1KM from the cabinet/exchange for this to be an effective option. Perhaps that rules out the further cabinet then. But the smaller cabinet is within this range. Assuming both cabinets are VDSL2 capable, which I’m not sure is the case. Also the house I live in now is very new. CAT5e cable everywhere and I’m hoping that means the wiring should be good.

When I put my address in on the network availability tool on the chorus website it says that I should only expect to see >1 MBPS speeds when the new cabinets are operational. These speeds seems horribly slow to me, in fact when I used to be on the Conklins I got a better speed than this. Looking at the type of cabinets they appear to be, it seems to me that I should be able to get much higher. Also somebody else from my street spoke to a chorus technician when they were working on one of the cabinets and they were told that they could expect speeds of up to 24MBPS. Hopefully it’s the latter and their mapping tool information is incorrect/out of date. However after having survived with no internet for over a year and a half at this point I’d take anything.

Hopefully somebody can answer some of my queries. It got a bit longer than I intended, sorry for that.

Actually I can't seem to post a picture at the moment, nor am I allowed to post links since I'm new here. I will try to add it when I get home. However to me, the larger cabinet looks identical to a whisper cabinet and the smaller cabinet is about half the size vertically, but it might be a bit longer.