So, I live in an apartment (Queens Lodge in Newmarket). I knew this wouldn't be easy as MDU/apartment installs never are, but just as we got so close the technician came and left saying "This install is too difficult, sorry."

In December, we had the consents approved. In late December through til February Chorus did all the groundwork, which included installing the fibre access terminals inside the communications cupboards on each floor of our building.

In April, we had a technician to come bring the fibre into our apartment. At this stage, the technicians that came said that more work needed to be done in order to get from the access terminals to my unit. Cool. fair enough.

I waited...

I saw other tenants in my apartment started to get fibre installed, I've seen on two occasions Chorus technicians splicing fibre in our apartment hallway for install into others apartments. I talked to one and he confirmed that he was installing fibre into another unit at the time.

I went back to my ISP Bigpipe, and they chased Chorus back one more time. That was today.

The technician took one look through for 10 minutes, and said "This is too hard, you aren't getting fibre. Too difficult, I won't do."

After all this effort, I'm quite upset.

But, what annoys me more, is the situation Chorus have put themselves in. They have installed all this equipment into our apartment building, to make it fibre ready. Except, it's too hard to cable it from the communications cupboard to the individual units.

But the real kicker is, the alternative is 5 mbit ADSL. This 600 unit apartment was built after the cabinetisation project started, however Chorus decided at the time to run the 600 copper pairs for this entire apartment all the way back to the exchange in Remuera (3km's away!!!). My mind is truly boggled by this, I don't understand why they couldn't have cabinetised this apartment at the time they were laying the copper.

What I would like to see is a real solution from Chorus. If UFB is too difficult to get from the communications cupboards in this apartment block to the individual units, can we at least have VDSL?

Although, from the sounds of it, Chorus has already well blown their budget on this apartment building, first when it was built by running all this copper from Newmarket to Remuera, and now second with the UFB rollout. Unfortunately, I don't think they full think things through before making their decisions.