City top for speed of broadband

Dunedin is becoming increasingly appealing as a base for high technology companies after recording the fastest fixed line broadband speeds in the country.

The city is way out in front as New Zealand's top city for fast, fixed-line broadband, thanks to winning the Chorus Gigatown competition.

Dunedin had an average connection speed of 196.3Mbps, at February 28, up nearly 41% on the 115.9Mbps recorded at the end of February last year.

North Shore was the second-fastest city with 54Mpbs, up from 30.7Mbps at the same time last year. Third-placed Rotorua was New Zealand's fastest-growing city for broadband speeds, growing from 28.6Mbps to 52.8Mbps in 12 months.

Chorus network strategy manager Kurt Rodgers said the results showed New Zealanders were downloading, streaming TV and gaming at a huge rate.

Overall, the average download speeds for households and small businesses on the Chorus network in February 2017 was 41Mbps compared with 25Mbps at the same time last year.

As Chorus continued laying ultra-fast fibre and upgrading the technology in its copper network, more Kiwis could, and were, taking advantage of the faster, more reliable broadband connections, he said.

''Our use of new technology is also driving the increase in speed. It doesn't matter whether you live in the cities or live rurally, content is flying into our homes faster due to new technology such as high-definition online television and more interactive and complex online games.''

As a nation, New Zealanders' average use of data was growing fast, Mr Rodgers said.

Last year, New Zealanders used 1.5 exabytes, or 1,500,000,000 gigabytes, of data.

''That's a lot of information, emails, movies, music and more being bundle and carried all over the country.

The number of households on the Chorus network using ultra-fast broadband had nearly doubled in the last 12 months to 21%. More households were taking advantage of Chorus's fast VDSL product, a stepping stone to fibre, with connections increasing to 17%, up from 5% last year.