Ultra-Fast Broadband (UFB)

Lately, you may have heard a lot of talk about fibre. That’s because fibre optic cables are key to building New Zealand’s world-class telecommunications network. Fibre delivers large amounts of data further and faster than traditionally copper cables.

The government’s objective is to achieve the roll-out of the Ultra Fast Broadband network to 75% of New Zealanders by 2019.  Crown Fibre Holdings (CFH) has been established to manage the rollout and Chorus was awarded 24 of the 33 candidate areas including Ashburton District. Priority is given to enable schools, hospitals, health service providers and businesses by 2015.

How will this be done?

Contractors working on the ultra fast broadband contract will take the fibre from the local exchange to new fibre cabinets in throughout the neighbourhood. From there they will lay microducts down each street in the UFB area, and blow the fibre through the microduct to the premises when a customer is ready to connect to fibre. They will install the fibre cables along the street using existing ducts, dig or drill to install new ducts and microducts, or in some cases they may use existing street poles. 

Once the work has been completed in each area, business and residential customers will be able to arrange a fibre connection with their telecommunications service provider who will be able to hook up ultra fast broadband to the property. Buildings such as apartment blocks will need fibre cabling run up to each individual apartment.

Where are we now?

Ashburton is currently heading in to Year 2 of the 9-year plan. 

Year 2

For more information, visit the Chorus website. 

Changing Land Use

Changing land use impacts significantly on the performance of the roading network, the level of maintenance to be achieved, and renewals and capital improvement required to meet these changing demands. 

In addition to this there is a need to clearly identify customer expectations as to levels of service to be met by the roading network and to plan our funding levels in the future to meet these levels of service.

Council will be carrying out an in-depth roading network analysis to ensure that the roading infrastructure will be able to provide an adequate level of service in both the short-term and long term future.  This analysis will identify the physical upgrades and funding necessary to meet these future needs and enable council to plan accordingly for this work.