Our copper withdrawal programme has been running for a while now and we are getting near the end of copper services in Chorus SFA areas that are not already under notice. Below is a view of our plan through to the end of our programme in Chorus fibre areas and including some programme updates.

Batches in other LFC fibre areas have been successful, and we will continue to include some of these areas– this activity will increase once copper withdrawal within Chorus fibre areas is complete.  

Key benefits 

We are publishing our plan for remaining copper services to help inform your plan for copper services. This view shows planned start dates for remaining batches.  

Call to action  

If you have any planned spend on copper network or equipment, please use this plan to prevent any wasted spend.  

Programme activity

With all the batches we’ve processed, there have been services that couldn’t be disconnected at the end of batch, for various reasons.  We are currently working through our WIP and will be reaching out to you for any updates on your impacted services. We are investigating what action we will take to get these customers onto an alternative service.  

There are also some remaining copper connections in withdrawn areas which fall outside the Copper Withdrawal Code (services provided to non-building access points and commercial services). We have sent letters to those RSPs with such connections setting out a date for withdrawal of these services. If you have these connections, we’d encourage you to explore alternative services as soon as possible and let us know if you need help.  

As we come to the end of providing services notice in Chorus fibre areas, this WIP will become increasingly important to focus on. Your assistance in this will be very much appreciated.

We have recently emptied our first exchange of all copper services. Birkdale exchange area has become our first fibre-only area in New Zealand. We have a few more on the verge of being empty which are a priority for us.

As of October 2024, we have:

• Emptied 1,511 Cabinets emptied
• Cabinets notified (not yet empty) - 972  
• Notified 98,000 Addresses
• Emptied Exchange – BKL (Birkdale)

Forward plan

Our high-level plan for this financial year is to include approx. 6,000 services per batch, maintaining the cadence of a batch every two months.  Batches in other LFC fibre areas have been successful, and we will continue to include some of these areas; this activity will increase once copper withdrawal within Chorus fibre areas is complete.  

This plan is also updated on the copper withdrawal page on the Service Provider (SP) website.

The copper withdrawal team thank you for your continued support to deliver our withdrawal programme.  

Contact

Get in touch with your Customer Engagement team if you have any questions or email us at copperwithdrawal@chorus.co.nz. You can find more information on our dedicated copper withdrawal page.