Nokia renews deal with Chorus

NEW DELHI: Chorus and Nokia have agreed on a three-year extension of their technology partnership to further invest in New Zealand's ultra high speed broadband program.

As part of the agreement, Nokia will deploy its broadband access, IP routing and optical transport technology solutions.

"Investments in the broadband network, combined with consumer uptake of telecom services, have seen the average broadband connection speed across the Chorus network increase to 27Mbps today from 10Mbps in 2012," the company said.

In parallel, the adoption of streaming video-on-demand services is driving significant network traffic, with one in three New Zealanders now subscribing to unlimited data plans - an increase of 300% over the previous year.

"To meet the booming demand, Chorus is investing in its ultra fast broadband network to enhance the high capacity, quality wholesale services it delivers across New Zealand," the company said in statement.

Under the three year agreement, Nokia will continue to deploy a mix of fixed access solutions including fiber-based GPON FTTH and copper-based VDSL2 technology, along with new IP routing and optical carrier transport services to help create the network scale and capacity needed.

Nokia will also provide network operations support including managed services expertise to deliver high service quality for customers. The agreement builds on the five-year managed services cooperation announced last year, where Nokia delivers monitoring and analysis of the operator's nationwide copper and fiber wholesale networks.

Tim Harris, Chief Commercial Officer at Chorus, said: "Demand for ultra fast broadband data services is increasing at a staggering pace. Fiber connections especially are growing strongly, most at 100Mbps or more. VDSL2 connections are also increasing with average speeds now exceeding 50Mbps. The Chorus network must be able support these speeds all the time and provide a sustained performance level at any time of day. Therefore, ensuring our networks can continue to scale and accommodate future bandwidth growth whilst remaining congestion free is essential. Nokia's expertise and industry leading fixed access, IP routing and transport solutions ensure we can meet this demand whilst reducing cost per bit."

Ray Owen, managing director of Oceania at Nokia, said: "Chorus is building an industry-leading broadband network that will support New Zealand's future digital innovations and economic developments. We're excited to be a part of that evolution, and are working hard to ensure our technology expertise and innovations in ultra-broadband access, routing and transport continue to help Chorus achieve that vision."

Total New Zealand fiber connections grew by 135% in 2015 - 200,000 homes and businesses are now connected

The average household used about 96 gigabytes of broadband data in January 2016 across Chorus' copper and fiber networks, almost double vs. a year ago.

46% of consumer and business fiber connections are now on speeds of 100Mbps or more, up from 25% a year ago

Average VDSL peak speeds on the Chorus copper network have increased from 35Mbps to over 50Mbps following network improvements