Put to the ultimate test during the Covid-19 lockdown, a new report has highlighted to New Zealanders just how world-leading their fibre broadband network is.
The recent autumn Measuring Broadband New Zealand report, put together by the Commerce Commission, assessed New Zealand's internet performance – taking in what happened during the lockdown, particularly when Level 4 began.
Kurt Rodgers, Chorus's network strategy manager, says the independent report demonstrated not only the capacity of fibre broadband but also its value as a fit-for-purpose utility network – and feels the lockdown will increase New Zealand's adoption of fibre broadband even more.
"We could not have had a better test," he says. "When we went into Level 4, virtually all of New Zealand was at home – and what did we do? We went on the internet. People were working from home, being schooled at home, they were entertaining themselves online, they were on Zoom, they were transferring big files, they were playing online games.
"We saw 34 per cent growth in usage overnight," he says. "That's a year's growth in one night – but we had no congestion on the fibre network."
The report shows that, even with millions of Kiwis online, the fibre broadband system coped easily, with only fixed wireless connections suffering. Fixed wireless is faster than the basic ADSL copper-wire system but is delivered by radio waves from cellphone towers – meaning everyone on that system has to share a signal, which can slow download speeds at times of high usage of as much as 16 per cent according to the latest Commerce Commission report.
Fibre broadband – essentially a laser beam shone down a glass pipe directly into a home – is used solely by that home and is thus not subject to the dilution of a shared signal: "Its capacity is untapped," says Rodgers. "Fibre has enormous capacity and we won't see it reached in my lifetime or for decades and decades…maybe the end of this century."
New Zealanders, he says, are fast taking advantage as fibre continues to be rolled out across the country: "When we started, take-up was slow to begin with and we were projected to have just a 20 per cent uptake by 2019.
"But it started to move fast in 2015; we went from the 'early adopter' stage to a mass market and, for the last three years, we have been doing something like 800 installations a day to the point where we now have 58 per cent uptake, one of the highest adoption rates in the world.
"As for data usage, 10 years ago, the average monthly usage per household in New Zealand was 10 gigabytes. Now it is over 300 gigabytes – a 30-fold increase. It's been driven by things like high-definition TV, streaming, games, Zoom meetings, more people in the house using more devices online."
Rodgers says with the exponential growth in data use comes the need for broadband that can cope with the growing demand. This is reflected in the Commerce Commission report with an assessment of how different broadband types cope with the high data use activity of streaming videos in High Ultra Definition (UHD).
It found fibre (over 98 per cent of the time) and VDSL connections (over 90 per cent of the time) were able to reliably stream in UHD, while ADSL and fixed wireless connections were more likely to encounter loss of picture quality and buffering or long loading times.
Rodgers says the trend in data use is only going to continue: "Just look where we have come from in a short time – most websites used to be text-based. Then images began to show up. Now we have video auto-play, GIFs, animation and so much more.
"Everyone is using huge amounts of data; expectations grow as technology keeps growing and it's a big reason why more people are switching to fibre.
"We have consistently seen 40 per cent annual compound growth in connections – and we are not expecting that to slow down."
He says only demographic behind in fibre adoption are older people, particularly in the 60+ age group: "I think it's true to say that many of them did not understand the need. My mum was one though I managed to get her onto fibre and an iPad. She uses Zoom and Facebook Messenger so she can see and talk to her granddaughter in London and my kids in Auckland. She loves playing scrabble online.
"She lives alone so she has really noticed the difference. She understands fibre now."
To see if you can get fibre at your place, enter your address in the Chorus Broadband Checker at www.chorus.co.nz
To find out how you can volunteer to be part of testing for New Zealand's leading study in internet performance go to: https://www.measuringbroadbandnewzealand.com/