We have been seeking continual enhancements in the way that we engage and partner with members of the RSP community. ISPANZ reflects a stronghold of key operators across our customer base.  

As gold sponsor of the 2023 ISPANZ Annual Conference, we had the opportunity to hear from the ISPANZ community on how we can better support their businesses, as well as share some insight into how and why our business is evolving.

The four key updates

1. An update on our revised UFB Handover strategy: Having listened to the feedback from RSPs and further examined our options to meet current and projected RSP demand in an efficient manner, we are no longer proposing to withdraw handover services from Spark sites, as originally proposed in 2021.  
2. Our Regional Ethernet Network (REN): The communications technology available to serve customers in our rural areas is rapidly changing. Copper is no longer the only option for customers and, in some cases, is not the best option.  New Zealand runs on fibre and the UFB roll-out has gone past 87 per cent of Kiwi homes and businesses. We would like to extend fibre further to enable more Kiwis to receive the best technology available. We will not be investing in any further extension of the copper network. Copper remains available to order ‘outside’ of those areas where fibre is available, where there is existing copper network.
3. Chorus Relay Connect (CRC): CRC transports traffic between two UFB Candidate Areas by collecting traffic from aggregation nodes at Points of Interconnection (POI). It is provided from POI to POI in specified locations and traffic can be handed back to RSP’s nominated footprints or Central Office by combining with other backhaul products. For this product we have reduced our pricing on average by 30% across various terms. Product changes were introduced on 1 August 2023. 
4. Chorus Exchange Connect (CXC)​: This new product will be launched on 4 September 2023​. CXC is a backhaul product allowing you to connect beyond our normal POI. Subject to feasibility checks, this network enables anywhere to anywhere connectivity where you need it most.  

Thank you to David Haynes (CEO ISPANZ), Shaun Fisher (President ISPANZ) and the ISPANZ team for the opportunity to sponsor the conference. We are looking forward to growing our partnership with the ISPANZ community.  

Contact 

For further information on these updates please contact your account team or Alice Brodie.