With more people working and learning from home and general population growth, the demand on the capacity of many rural internet towers has increased. This has resulted in some towers going into ‘stop sell’ where no new users can be supported. The impact of stop sells and congestion on households and businesses is a significant restriction on the ability to work from home, conduct home schooling, engage in e-commerce, connect with whānau, keep updated on events and access entertainment.
With a focus on capacity at the urban fringe, 70 rural mobile broadband towers were initially upgraded at the start of the first Covid-19 lockdown to ease network congestion during this time.
Since then, two rounds of funding have been secured for further capacity upgrades totalling ~$90m.
The upgrades will include a range of technology types, best suited to the area:
- Fibre-to-the-Home
- VDSL / Copper
- 4G / 5G Mobile Broadband
- Fixed Wireless Broadband
The following regions are included in the RCU programme and are serviced by the operators listed:
February media release: https://www.crowninfrastructure.govt.nz/2022/02/23/homes-businesses-to-benefit-from-upgrade-to-rural-broadband/
Contracting is underway for the second round and information will be available in due course.