Ultra-fast broadband 'lightning quick'

Ultrafast broadband is "lightning quick - properly fast", one of its first residential customers found.

In December 19-year-old Brandon Ruscoe responded to a Twitter request by internet service provider Orcon, and volunteered to trial the new technology.

He first had to make sure there was a "black stub" sticking out of a nearby powerpole, showing that ultrafast broadband had been unrolled in his Gonville street. Then he emailed the company.

That was just before Christmas, and within three days Ultrafast Fibre staff members were at his house to install it. "I think I was the first person to get installed in a residential area," he said.

"The guys were quite excited to do it."

They got a permit to climb the power pole, connected a wire to the stub and took it up the pole and across to his house. Then they drilled a hole through the wall and took it indoors where he wanted it - into his bedroom.

Inside they installed a cabinet, which linked to a modem provided by Orcon. From the modem are connections to two telephones and to computers. Some are connected by wires and some wirelessly, by signal moving through the air.

It took less than a day to install the equipment, but several weeks for it to work well. When it did Brandon was impressed, especially with the upload speed.

"It's 10 times as fast as the upload I used to have," he said.

He can now do a lot of things at once, from Skyping to downloading and watching high definition movies. He's happy with that, though he said speeds do slow in the evening.

He's the main user of the system, and his bedroom is set up like a home theatre/office, with multiple screens and speakers.

His mother, Lynne, uses the ultrafast broadband wirelessly, with her own equipment.

The two pay $99 a month for the telephone connection, unlimited data, download speeds of 30MB and upload speeds of 10MB.

They're using 200GB of data a month, and Brandon said that was plenty.

"What it means is you can start buying a lot of digital stuff, because you're not having to worry about a data cap."

They get unlimited national telephone calls of up to an hour as part of their plan. Their monthly telephone costs have reduced, but the new system does mean they will not be able to use their phones during power cuts.

An Orcon spokesman said installation would be free for the majority of Wanganui customers.

"The only one that we needed to get a quote for was for a customer who was 500m-plus from the road down a long driveway."

The New Zealand-owned company has about 20 residential customers in Wanganui at present.

InSPire Net is the only other provider offering ultrafast broadband to residential Wanganui customers. An additional four providers are offering to supply it to businesses.