Chinese telco wins contract for Christchurch broadband

Workers laying fibre optic cabling. Photo / supplied

Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei has scored its second major ultra-fast broadband contract and will supply equipment for the Christchurch leg of the internet scheme.

Enable Services, one of the Government's partners in the rollout, yesterday said it had signed an equipment, services and maintenance agreement with Huawei.

The multimillion-dollar contract will extend Huawei's growing footprint in New Zealand and builds on a similar equipment agreement with Ultrafast Fibre made last November.

The fibre lines laid as part of the UFB scheme will offer 75 per cent of New Zealanders download speeds of at least 100 megabits per second by the end of 2019 - over 20 times faster than the average speeds enjoyed by urban users in 2010.

Chorus also signed an equipment deal with Huawei late last year, which will aid in the rollout of fibre lines in the rural broadband initiative.

The Government announced in April last year it would join Telecom and Vodafone in the internet initiative, which aims to offer more than 80 per cent of rural households internet speeds of at least 5Mb per second over the next six years. Within that time, 93 per cent of rural schools will also get internet speeds of 100Mb per second.

After Telecom's split with network-arm Chorus last November, the infrastructure company will be responsible for the rollout of 3100km of fibre cables in rural New Zealand and Vodafone will build 154 cell towers providing fixed, wireless and mobile internet.

Huawei's technology was also used to build 2degrees' mobile infrastructure and last year it won a $140 million contract to extend 2degrees' network.