Wellington New Zealand fibre install

[kingdragonfly]

So it's September 2012, and I got Fibre installed.

According to the Compass Tech's I talked to, I'm customer #15 in Wellington, and the first customer in my neighbourhood, near Johnsonville.

I was using Vodafone Naked DSL

* no fixed phone

* 120GB cap

* $99.95/month.

* free install

Now it's Orcon Fibre

* phone included (phone runs over Internet, but really, it acts like a plain old phone. no more landline rental)

*60 GB (choices are 30 GB, 60, 200 and 1000 GB per month)

* $90 /month ($14/month till 2013)

* free install

You can check if you're street address is support here
http://www.orcon.net.nz/fibre#fibre-landing

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BLOWING THE FIBRE
---------------------------

Basically when you see a bunch of Chorus vans in your neighbourhood, they are doing two things.

1) installing central fibre access points

2) burying bundles of empty pipes under sidewalks. There's one pipe for each house.

Chorus needs to get the fibre from central points, under the sidewalks, past your front yard, and into the house.

So when you order a fibre connection,

* one team works to get the final few meters pipe from the sidewalk to your home.

* one team uses an air compressor to push the fibre through the pipe.

* one team actually makes the final connection to the white box inside your home.

Chorus had a LOT of problems with "blowing the fibre" because there air compressor was too weak. After many attempts, they got a more powerful compressor and got it to work.

------------
WORRIES
------------

Worries before: if you have a shared driveway, you need your neighbour's or body corporate permission. In my case they were able to "thrust" the cable under the driveway, with little disturbance to the soil. However it's quite possible Chorus would need to cut some concrete, bury a pipe, and replace the concrete.

Worries after: To get the free install, it's a 2 year minimum contract. If I quit the day after installing, I'd owe Orcon about $1,900 (3x14 + 21x89)

------------------------
FINAL IMPRESSIONS
------------------------

Do NOT disconnect your current internet connection, until after the new fibre is installed and running.

Though I've had it only a few days, I'm finding fibre unbelievably fast for local sites, like Trade Me.

International traffic is a little faster, but as expected the overseas cables are the bottleneck.

The Orcon phone / firewall / wireless access point works well. I like having a phone installed again in my home, as a backup for my mobile.

Overall, I'm pretty happy

[Nomad]

We had the flyer for some months now, we are in Churton.

We are on a ADSL contract. I heard the uptake for people generally have been very low. Hence Orcon did their free fibre till end of this year to get them on. For us, we're not heavy users, need to spend more to rewire the other phone jacks into the router and the folks don't use the internet should we leave.

[kingdragonfly]

Of course, it seems most Internet provider have an early termination fee. However it's usually around $99 to $150.

If you're not staying in your place for at least 2 years, I wouldn't have fibre installed.

In my case, my maximum disconnection fee could be $1,900 (3x14 + 21x89). It's too early to tell how firm Orcon would be on early termination.

[linw]

I was #9. I'm not one to boast, but .......

I am also with Orcon, now. Camborne is my hood. I was with Telecom paying $99/mth. So, free install and free till 2013 and $75 thereafter sounded too good to pass up.

After the POTS line was physically disconnected I just plugged the Genius into a phone jack using a standard RJ11 to BT cable. All phones, incl answer phone, work pretty much as before.

Can't say I notice much difference in speed but the 10Mbps up is helpful. Maybe an online gamer may see a difference?? Speedtest to the Orcon tester shows 27/9.

Re the contract, you do need to be pretty certain of being in the house till mid 2014.

I also agree with the OP, that, if you can, keep the ADSL/phone going till the cutover is going well. In my case there was a delay of a few days but my old ADSL and ph were still going so that was sweet. It took a week to port my ph but it didn't matter.

All in all, I am a happy customer.

[psycik]

Oh joy, I'm in the Hutt, and not expecting any UFB till 2019.... #sadface

[paulw]

Same where I live in Auckland..

[GameJunkie]

How much is the 1000GB plan????

[SolMiester]

NOW (Airnet) had some good offers, for joining them for DSL, but they had free upgrade to Fibre 30\10 or 100\50 for extra %40 a month...Was going to go for it until they advise Fibre not available where I live for 3 yrs?.....what, its just around the corner!!!

[wainuitech]

The real question is what sort of speeds are you actually getting Via a Speed test ?

Obviously the speed differ depending on where its coming from, network traffic etc.

[kingdragonfly]

Using http://www.speedtest.net/

from wellington to Auckland

download ~25.0 Mbps
upload ~9.5 Mbps