Chorus

Getting fibre to your door is just one part of the recipe for better broadband. Another key ingredient is the wiring within your home. After all, a motorway isn’t much use if the on-ramp limits your speed to a crawl.

A high-speed Ethernet wiring system is becoming essential for modern homes and premises. That’s because traditional telephone wiring won’t meet the demands of Ethernet-based services delivered over DSL broadband or fibre to the home.

If you want to be sure your home wiring doesn’t hold your broadband back, then you should, at a minimum, install Cat5e cable.

Cat5e cable is a high quality copper cable - designed to deliver Ethernet standard services over short distances.

Installing future-proofed wiring makes sense when you’re building or renovating because you can install Cat5e cabling at the same time as other services (e.g. electrical, plumbing) are going in and before wall linings restrict access.

Chorus is introducing wiring services later in 2010 to help homeowners navigate these issues.

Wiring your home for faster broadband

Wiring your home with an eye to the future could help save you money in the long run and may even prove a valuable investment. This is especially true in fibre to the home subdivisions where traditional copper-based telecommunications services will not be available.

Cat5e cabling should be “star-wired” through your home, meaning that it should travel out from a central hub (called a Star Wiring box) with connections in most rooms. Read more >

Remember, your wiring will only be as good as you or your contractors choose to install. Unlike electrical wiring and plumbing, there are no enforceable standards for telecommunications wiring. The telecommunications industry has, however, published a voluntary Code of Practice. If a contractor is installing wiring for you, make sure they are familiar with it. The Code is available at www.tcf.org.nz/premwiring

Upgrading an existing home

Many New Zealand homes have old telecommunications wiring installed in them which already struggles to keep up with the demands of existing high-speed broadband. The cost of completely upgrading this wiring to a future-proofed standard may be prohibitive (several thousand dollars in some cases), which is why we have developed a special device to potentially reduce the amount of re-wiring required. Read more >

Future-proofing your home: ducting

Although Cat5e standard wiring is more than sufficient to meet the bandwidth demands of current telecommunications services, you never know what things will be like a few years from now. One way you can better prepare your home for an upgrade to fibre is to install ducting alongside any new Cat5e cabling. Once you have ducting installed, a fibre upgrade can be as simple as feeding a new fibre cable down the ducting.  Ducting is relatively inexpensive and is covered in section 26.5 of the Code of Practice published by the telecommunications industry.

Other factors at work

While fibre connections and good quality wiring have the potential to deliver faster broadband speeds than copper-based connections, it’s important to remember that there are other factors that can affect your broadband experience. These include things such as your broadband plan, computer, the server you are accessing content from and how 'busy' the internet is at the time you are browsing.