Today, Enable announced where it is building ultra-fast broadband up to July 2013. The plan includes delivering fibre services to all of Rolleston, large areas of northern Christchurch, and half of Lincoln.

“Over the next year we will grow our network considerably and make fibre broadband services available to thousands more homes and businesses. This deployment plan means over 30,000 home and business users will have access to Enable’s fibre broadband in total,” said Enable CEO Steve Fuller.

Enable is focussing on delivering its network to suburbs experiencing high levels of new subdivision growth.

“We need to ensure broadband and telephone services over Enable’s fibre are available in new subdivisions as homes are completed – especially with so many families looking to relocate from earthquake damaged homes,” said Mr Fuller.

To meet this need, Enable has worked with developers to identify areas where new subdivisions are being established and focused its network build programme in these suburbs, while also making services available to nearby established neighbourhoods.

“Rolleston is an excellent example of how our approach will benefit a community. It’s an area expecting enormous growth over the next few years and the copper infrastructure in place is already struggling to deliver services to the town,” said Mr Fuller.

“In the second half of 2013, the whole Rolleston community – including families moving into newly built properties – will be able to connect to fibre broadband through a range of retail service providers. The people of Rolleston can be confident that our network will deliver them vastly improved, high performance broadband services, and will be able to grow in step with the town.”

Enable will deploy UFB network to the northern parts and new subdivisions in Lincoln, and is also continuing its build in Christchurch over the coming months. This includes bringing fibre broadband to large parts of Papanui, Bishopdale, Burnside, Northcote, Casebrook, Redwood and new subdivisions along the northern edge of the city – as well as in Halswell and Wigram. The first areas (Papanui and Bishopdale) will be able to access services within three months.

Enable’s third area of focus for the next year is on making a wider range of fibre broadband services available to more businesses in Christchurch. This includes continuing to build new network in more commercial areas, beginning with Hornby.

“We will progressively make high speed fibre services available to businesses of all sizes at a price that is more affordable for many of them,” said Mr Fuller.