Internet access is widely available in New Zealand, with 94% of New Zealanders having access to the internet . It first became accessible to university students in the country in 1989. , there are 1,867,000 broadband connections, of which 1,524,000 are residential and 361,000 are business or government.
Fibre to the home (FTTH) accounts for 32% of connections, and FTTH was accelerating rapidly with 54% growth in 2018. Digital subscriber line (DSL) over phone lines provides 44% of connections (down 16% in 2018) and cable internet, mobile broadband, fixed wireless and satellite broadband account for the remaining quarter of connections. Fibre to the home is provided through New Zealand's Ultra-Fast Broadband program, started after 2008 with a target of 87% of the population by 2020. FTTH is available to 67% of New Zealanders.
The phone and fibre networks are mostly owned by network company Chorus Limited, which wholesale services to retail ISPs. Parts of Wellington, Kapiti and Christchurch have cable internet access from One NZ, but this is being retired. Nearly all of the population is covered by 4G and 5G mobile broadband. 3G broadband is being retired, and due to be completed by mobile providers by April 2026. 3G frequencies are being refarmed for 4G and 5G. Satellite internet is available throughout the country.
, Ookla reports the average download speed for fixed broadband as 201.72 Mbit/s and the average upload speed as 92.9 Mbit/s (ranked 35th in the world). This measurement is up from Q1 2017, when Akamai reported an average peak download speed of 70.8 Mbit/s (35th). For mobile broadband, , Ookla reports the average download speed as 53.59 Mbit/s and the average upload speed as 14.49 Mbit/s, ranking it 13th in the world. Broadband pricing is at, or above the OECD average, and most connections have an unlimited data cap. There are more than 80 ISPs, with two of them having three-quarters of the market. The New Zealand Government has funded two broadband expansion initiatives, with the aim of providing fibre to the home for 87% of the population and bringing broadband to 97.8% of the population by 2019. International connectivity is mainly provided by the Southern Cross Cable.
Retail services +Nominal broadband speeds () Speed (Mbit/s) Percentage Download < 8 <1% 8-24 3% 24-50 47% 50-99 19% > 99 29% Upload <10 22% 10-20 49% >20 28% As at 2018, there were 829,000 DSL connections (down from 1.3 million in 2015), 44% of the broadband total, and 598,000 (up from 105,000) fibre connections, 32% of the total. There are also 441,000 (down from 485,000) cellular, satellite, cable and fixed wireless connections comprising 24% of the total.
DSL Most of the telephone infrastructure is owned by Chorus. Chorus provides ADSL (up to 8/1 Mbit/s), ADSL2+ (up to 24/1 Mbit/s) and VDSL2 (up to 100/50 Mbit/s or 70/30 Mbit/s) services over the copper phone network.
Most connections are at full line speed, and although monthly data transfer caps used to be common, most plans are now unlimited. As DSL is sensitive to distance, the closer the customer is to the equipment, the faster the connections. Chorus has implemented a fibre-to-the-node (also known as "cabinetisation") project to bring the equipment closer to the user, so 91% of the population is able to access a DSL connection of 10 Mbit/s or more. , 97.3% of phone lines are capable of accessing ADSL and 62.4% are capable of VDSL2.
Chorus' DSL footprint has shrunk considerably, due to migration to FTTH networks operated by Chorus and other providers. DSL connections are down to 600,000 (from a peak of over 1.2 million in 2014).
Chorus does not sell services directly to customers, instead, they wholesale services to internet retailers at regulated prices.VDSL2 pricing is not regulated. In addition to ISPs being able to use Chorus' infrastructure, the copper loop is unbundled, so operators like One NZ, Compass and CallPlus (Slingshot/Orcon) can install their own equipment at telephone exchanges and rent just the copper line from Chorus. , 131,000 (8%) lines are unbundled.
Fibre
Fibre to the home was rolled out to urban areas of the country via the Ultra-Fast Broadband scheme, starting in 2014, and ending in December 2022. The network was constructed using Gigabit-capable Passive Optical Networks (GPON) technology, which is reliable, comparatively low-cost and has been used in projects such as Google Fiber.
The UFB project was completed in December 2022, bringing high-speed fibre broadband to 412 towns and cities, with an uptake level of 73%. Residential plans were between 30/10 Mbit/s and 8000/8000 Mbit/s, with 8000 Mbit/s (8 gigabit) services made available to approximately 150,000 premises in Auckland and Wellington. , there are 92 retailers of UFB services.
P2P fibre is available in business areas of the cities from several companies, including Chorus, One NZ, CityLink and Vector.
Cable One NZ has a DOCSIS 3.1 hybrid fibre-coaxial network covering parts of Kapiti, 85% of Wellington and almost two-thirds of Christchurch, a total of 145,000 homes. There are about 60,000 customers on the cable network. It provides plans of 200/20 Mbit/s and 1000/100 Mbit/s.
Mobile There are three physical mobile networks in the country. One NZ provides 4G coverage to 99% of the population, and 5G coverage to 69% of the population and Satellite to mobile outside cell site coverage. Spark provides 4G and 5G coverage to 99% . 2degrees has 4G coverage to 86% of the population.
Fixed wireless
One NZ offers a fixed wireless service provided over 4G and 5G in rural areas under the government-subsidized Rural Broadband Initiative scheme. As a condition of the subsidy, One NZ also wholesales this service to other retailers. One NZ also offers a fixed wireless service in urban areas with monthly plans over 4G and 5G.
Spark (and low cost brand Skinny) also offer a fixed wireless service over 4G (5G is offered at no extra cost for eligible customers) in both urban and rural areas. Spark began moving low usage customers off copper connections onto the fixed wireless service in 2017. Spark and low cost brand Skinny offer an unlimited fixed wireless plan. As of Feb 2018 there were 104,000 customers on Spark's fixed wireless service.
Woosh once offered a fixed wireless service in Southland until 1 July 2016 when it closed the business. It used a proprietary TDD-CDMA technology by IP Wireless that was no longer supported by vendors. The maximum speed was 1.6 Mbit/s.
There are Wireless Internet Service Providers (WISPs) covering regional rural areas, with about 40,000 customers. They typically use the unlicensed 2.4 and 5.8 GHz bands. WISPA-NZ – or more fully the Wireless Internet Service Providers Association of New Zealand Inc – was established in January 2017. They received funding for expansion in August 2017 from the governments RBI2 program.
Satellite Satellite broadband is available throughout the country from Farmside (using IPSTAR), and Gravity using JCSAT-3A (then Kacific-1 when launched in late 2019).
Dial-up In 2018 dial up was less than 1% of all connections in NZ compared with 7% in 2012. In April 2017, Spark NZ announced plans to replace all Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) exchanges with new IP equipment within 5 years. Dial up will not be supported. In May 2018, Spark withdrew dial up services. Followed by One NZ (formerly Vodafone) in May 2021
Government broadband upgrade plan The government has two plans to bring fast broadband to 97.8% of the population by 2019.
Ultra-Fast Broadband Initiative
The Government is spending NZ$1.35 billion on public-private partnerships with Chorus and three local electricity network companies to roll out fibre-to-the-home connection in all main towns and cities with population over 10,000. The programme aims to deliver ultra-fast broadband capable of at least 100 Mbit/s download and 50 Mbit/s upload to 75% of New Zealanders by 2019. In total, 1,340,000 households will be connected.
In 2015, the Government launched a $152 million to $210 million extension of the original UFB programme, with the aim of extending UFB programme coverage from 75 per cent to 80 per cent of New Zealanders.
Rural Broadband Initiative The government awarded a $300 million Rural Broadband Initiative (RBI) contract to Vodafone and Chorus to bring broadband of at least 5 Mbit/s to 86% of rural customers by 2016. Vodafone will install 154 new cell towers and upgrade 387 towers, adding 250,000 addresses to its 3G coverage. , 116 new towers have been installed and 314 towers upgraded, covering approximately 242,814 addresses. , there are 6064 customers on the RBI wireless network. By January 2016, Vodafone was actively extending its 4G network, and on track to deliver speeds as high as 100 Mbit/s. Chorus will provide fibre to the new Vodafone towers, 1040 schools, 183 libraries and 50 health providers. Chorus will also be upgrading or installing 1215 new cabinets to increase GPON, VDSL and ADSL coverage to 100,969 lines. , 93,348 lines have been upgraded, with an 80% uptake rate.
In 2015, in addition to expanding the coverage of the UFB programme, the government also launched a further $100 million investment to expand the RBI, and $50 million to improve mobile coverage in black spot areas.
In August 2017 Crown Infrastructure Holdings, now part of National Infrastructure Funding and FinancingNational Infrastructure Funding and Financing website entered into contracts with the Rural Connectivity Group and with a number of Wireless Internet Service Providers to deliver the RBI2/MBSF programme.https://www.crowninfrastructure.govt.nz/wireless-internet-service-providers-wisps/
Data caps + Data caps () Data cap(GB/month) Connections Percentage < 5 204,000 11 5-20 64,000 3 20-50 492,000 26 50-100 411,000 21 >100 125,000 6 None 628,000 33
Monthly data caps used to be common in New Zealand, with over 90% of connections having caps in 2014. , less than 30% of internet connections now have a fixed data cap. Once users have exceeded their data cap, they typically have the option of having the speed limited to 64–128 kbit/s for the rest of the month or paying for any extra data used. Now, most RSP's (retail service providers) offer unlimited data plans. On average (August 2019), each household uses 265 GB of data per month.
Most mobile phone data plans have set caps, with any excess paid for per MB (although extra data blocks can be purchased to avoid the expensive casual data pricing). As of 2014, Vodafone claimed its cellular data network is the fastest in the world, with downloads of 5 to 20 Mbit/s on 3G and 20 to 75 Mbit/s on LTE 4G being usually available. In April 2017, 2degrees announced unlimited data plans as part of a plan with unlimited calls and texts.
Internet service providers , there were about 80 internet service providers. 16% had fewer than 100 customers, 41% had 101 to 1000 customers, 28% had between 1001 and 10,000 customers, 7% had 10,001 and 100,000 customers and 4% had more than 100,000 customers. 28% of ISPs wholesale bandwidth to other ISPs and 24% sell packages to other ISPs for resale.
In the first quarter of 2020, the ISPs with more than 1.0% market share (in brackets) were: Spark (including sub-brand Skinny) (40%), One NZ (21%), Vocus Group (including Slingshot and Orcon) (13%), 2degrees (7%), and Trustpower (6%).
Pricing , three unlimited UFB plans can be purchased: NZ$79 per month for a 100 Mbit/s downlink and 20 Mbit/s uplink plan, NZ$99 per month for a 200 Mbit/s downlink and 20 Mbit/s uplink plan and NZ$129 per month for a 1 Gbit/s downlink and 500 Mbit/s uplink plan.
The Commerce Commission, which is responsible for telecommunications regulation, performed a comparison of broadband prices in New Zealand with prices in OECD and OECD-like countries. The data used is from June 2013.