This is a significant milestone in Enable’s partnership with the Crown to deliver fibre broadband services to up to 180,000 homes and businesses in greater Christchurch under the Government’s Ultra-Fast Broadband initiative. 

“It’s exciting to know more than half our community can now access fibre broadband services,” says Enable CEO, Steve Fuller.  “What is more, we are continuing to accelerate our deployment and will be two-thirds complete in nine months’ time – with 120,000 customers able to connect.”

At 30 September, just shy of 15,000 customers were enjoying fibre broadband in their homes and businesses.

“We are now connecting over 1,000 new customers each month – meaning 50 people per day are connecting,” adds Mr Fuller. “Our uptake rate has increased to over 16 percent. Some suburbs such as Rolleston and Wigram are over 40 percent – meaning pretty soon every second house in these suburbs will be connected.”

Enable expects uptake to continue to rise in the coming year and has set an ambitious target of increasing the number of connections to beyond 24,000 by mid-2016.

Enable has seen an uplift in the number of small businesses making the switch to fibre broadband in recent months – as they realise what faster, more reliable connectivity can deliver in terms of productivity and cost savings.

Families are fast moving to online entertainment options such as Netflix, Neon and Lightbox – which Enable believes is a key reason families are moving to fibre. The TV networks are also responding to better connectivity by live streaming their hero shows – such as The Block.

“Last week, a local video store announced it was closing its doors – again highlighting how entertainment is now primarily sourced online. This means fibre broadband is the best choice connectivity option for everyone,” says Mr Fuller. 

Enable’s top 10 suburbs for fibre broadband uptake: