“Seeing customer numbers increase at such a strong rate is excellent news for our business and clearly demonstrates the demand for fibre broadband across the greater Christchurch community,” says Enable CEO, Steve Fuller.

“In November, we received well over 1,000 orders and we expect this to become the norm from now on. Our customer connection rate is 34 percent ahead of our plans at the moment.” 

Mr Fuller puts the accelerated uptake primarily down to business owners and families becoming increasingly aware of just how much better their internet experience will be on fibre.

“For example, there are more services entering the market all the time that depend on high-performing internet connections and ever increasing numbers of connected devices in the home. Fibre broadband is the best option for consumers that want to make the most of these services and devices.” 

Other factors impacting Enable’s fibre broadband connection rate are a faster network deployment and almost all major retail service providers actively marketing and selling Enable’s services.

In the six months to Christmas, Enable built and launched new network to 13,500 homes and businesses – taking the total network coverage to 70,000 potential customers.

“Our network deployment programme is running 10 percent ahead of our plan for the year and we’ve got a lot of network being built across Christchurch at the moment,” adds Mr Fuller.

“We expect to have well over 85,000 homes and businesses able to access our services by the end of June – just shy of 50 percent of our total network coverage area.”

Today Enable has ten retail service providers offering residential fibre broadband services and 30 offering business services.

“We now have almost all retailers selling our services – including the two largest retailers that account for over 80 percent of the broadband market,” says Mr Fuller.

“There are a lot of companies now talking to Christchurch families and business owners about the benefits of fibre and trying to win them as customers. This is contributing significantly to the demand ground-swell.”