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freitasm

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#318687 12-Feb-2025 08:15
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Press release:

 

 

Chorus today announces free speed upgrades to some of its most popular wholesale plans, in anticipation of New Zealand’s ever-growing demand for high-speed internet.

 

Chorus has consulted with its broadband retailers on how best to work with them to deliver these upgrades – with significant download speed boosts to Fibre 50 plans (including Home Fibre Starter) and Home Fibre 300. This will be at no additional cost to broadband providers from Chorus – so that the speed upgrades can be passed through to consumers.

 

From June 2025, the fast-growing 50/10Mbps plan will have double the download and upload speeds to 100/20Mbps; while the most popular residential plan, 300/100Mbps, will see a significant boost to 500/100Mbps. Any upgrades to eligible consumer plans will be determined by the broadband providers.

 

As the country’s largest wholesale fibre provider, Chorus recognises the need to meet the evolving internet demands of Kiwis – as well as anticipate future growth in data consumption and the emergence of new digitally-connected technologies.

 

Evident by Chorus’ recent network usage ‘peaks’ across 2024, Kiwis are becoming more data hungry in general, and major events such as streaming the Black Caps test match and Fortnite updates are taking more broadband bandwidth than ever. New Zealanders’ household data usage growth has skyrocketed over the last decade, growing 13-fold from less than 50GB on average per month to about 650GB today.  

 





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DimasikTurbo
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  #3341764 12-Feb-2025 08:18
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Makes 1000/500 usefull to just a few who needs to upload ton of data and not waste time on this.




  #3341767 12-Feb-2025 08:39
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Are the other players (Northpower, Tuatahi & Enable) going to follow?

I'm on Tuatahi's network and I'd probably downgrade from 300/100Mbps to 100/20Mbps to save a few dollars a month if it was on offer. 100/20 is plenty fast enough for me


freitasm

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  #3341781 12-Feb-2025 09:14
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That's a good question. I don't know the answer.





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TechnoGuy001
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  #3341789 12-Feb-2025 10:03
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I love that Chorus is doing this. NZ has amazing fibre infrastructure and it pains me to see ISPs offering 4g/5g for (usually unsuspecting) residential customers, instead of rock solid, consistently fast fibre.

 

And you know, not adding more congestion then we already have on our mobile networks. So actually out and about mobile uses have a usable connection.


mentalinc
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  #3341837 12-Feb-2025 10:10
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This is great, look forward to the uplift, but does make the higher end plans less useful for 99% of people.





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wellygary
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  #3341841 12-Feb-2025 10:15
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The fact that Chorus are not seeking to change their wholesale pricing says to me that they are hoping to sway the ComCom to look more favourably on its UFB expansion plans

cddt
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  #3341843 12-Feb-2025 10:20
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TechnoGuy001:

 

...it pains me to see ISPs offering 4g/5g for (usually unsuspecting) residential customers, instead of rock solid, consistently fast fibre.

 

 

It's incredible how many people swear black and blue they find FWA to be better than fibre. 99.9% of the time they find fibre a poor experience because they have thirty devices connected to a decade-old router which only offers 802.11n...





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  #3341848 12-Feb-2025 10:42
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cddt:

 

It's incredible how many people swear black and blue they find FWA to be better than fibre. 99.9% of the time they find fibre a poor experience because they have thirty devices connected to a decade-old router which only offers 802.11n...

 

 

I don't think I've ever heard anyone argue that fixed wireless is 'better' in any way, but I think it's good that it's available for specific use cases where it's necessary. A perfect example is my neighbour whose fibre cable is damaged and Chorus won't fix it due to a commercial dispute with the original property developer - she would have no internet at all if it weren't for fixed wireless.

 

In terms of these new changes, I live alone and would be tempted to switch to the budget option but I wonder about the implications of the slow upload speed when using iCloud storage.


freitasm

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  #3341851 12-Feb-2025 10:46
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Except the folks that use Starlink and praise it like the best thing in the world. 

 

And the sales people trying to push fixed wireless because the telco then won't have to pay Chorus for a connection.





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allio
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  #3341854 12-Feb-2025 10:52
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Not going to complain about a free speed upgrade but it's disheartening to see the plans becoming more and more asymmetrical over time. That's something that I would have been happy to leave behind in the DSL days (remember 2Mb/128Kb?). It also negatively differentiates our otherwise world-class fibre network from the rest of the world's, which is generally symmetrical from what I see.

 

Really hope this trait doesn't bleed over into hyperfibre.


ascroft
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  #3341856 12-Feb-2025 10:58
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Guess they want to charge businesses more than your average TikTok streamer…….





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CYaBro
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  #3341857 12-Feb-2025 10:59
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allio:

 

Not going to complain about a free speed upgrade but it's disheartening to see the plans becoming more and more asymmetrical over time. That's something that I would have been happy to leave behind in the DSL days (remember 2Mb/128Kb?). It also negatively differentiates our otherwise world-class fibre network from the rest of the world's, which is generally symmetrical from what I see.

 

Really hope this trait doesn't bleed over into hyperfibre.

 

 

I see many people commenting from other countries that have a fibre connection with something like 1000/50, so even worse than our asymmetrical connections.





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lxsw20
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  #3341859 12-Feb-2025 11:02
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alasta:

 

In terms of these new changes, I live alone and would be tempted to switch to the budget option but I wonder about the implications of the slow upload speed when using iCloud storage.

 

 

 

 

You're only uploading the changes to iCloud you make in a day. Unless you're recording multiple long 4k videos daily you won't notice it at all. While 20Mbit is slower its not exactly slow. 


wired
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  #3341866 12-Feb-2025 11:18
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allio:

 

Not going to complain about a free speed upgrade but it's disheartening to see the plans becoming more and more asymmetrical over time. That's something that I would have been happy to leave behind in the DSL days (remember 2Mb/128Kb?). It also negatively differentiates our otherwise world-class fibre network from the rest of the world's, which is generally symmetrical from what I see.

 

Really hope this trait doesn't bleed over into hyperfibre.

 

 

The reason for the asymmetrical plans is that the fibre traffic generally is asymmetrical and has become more so over the years with steaming movies etc. Last time I looked it was typically a 10:1 ratio.

 

Also the most commonly used GPON technology is also asymmetric with a maximum of ~2.5 Gbps down and ~1.25 Gbps up. So the plans tended to follow this physical restriction.

 

The new Hyperfibre technology is different and can provide a symmetric service and that may be where you are seeing the growth in symmetric plans. 

 

The new 50 Gbps PON can do a range of upstream speeds but it can also do symmetrical plans. That technology is still to come out of the factory in any quantity so it will be interesting to see what the ISPs offer.

 

As for the 200 Gbps PON that is currently being researched…


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  #3341869 12-Feb-2025 11:25
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DimasikTurbo:

 

Makes 1000/500 usefull to just a few who needs to upload ton of data and not waste time on this.

 

 

 

 

Well when fortnite gets an update the 5 of us max out the download... So I would like to see 2500 as my router can handle that lol. 


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