How we get the internet to you
Building the network
Right now, we’re building the network of the future, rolling out fibre to more than 1.3 million homes and businesses so that New Zealand can be one of the best connected countries in the world.
We connect a home or business to fibre broadband every minute of the working day.
How we get the internet to you
Fibre
Our fibre network uses fibre optic cable to transport huge amounts of data via pulses of light at ultra-fast speeds. Fibre performance doesn’t degrade over distance so your broadband speed is consistent.
Where possible, we’re taking fibre from the local exchange past your house so you can connect to the new network.
How we get the internet to you
Copper
Our copper network uses existing copper lines to provide phone and broadband services to your property. Each home is connected to a local roadside cabinet by a copper pair (two copper cables twisted together). With copper, the distance from your house to the roadside cabinet can affect your broadband speed and performance.
ADSL is our basic broadband service operating over copper. VDSL is part fibre, providing faster connections. VDSL is available to 80 per cent of the country right now.
How we get the internet to you
Local Exchange
All of our copper and fibre cables and connections end up at the local exchange. Chorus has 600 local exchanges around the country. Each local exchange connects anywhere from 500 – 50,000 homes.
The Chorus fibre and copper network is congestion free, meaning our network will always have more capacity for data than you need so that we can continue to deliver the same reliable connection at any time of the day.
Connecting you to the internet
At the local exchange, the data from your broadband connection travels on to a point of interconnect (POI). There are 30 POI in major towns and cities around New Zealand. The POI is where our network ends and we hand over the data to your broadband provider’s network. Broadband providers are the companies that provide you with access to the internet.
How we work with your broadband provider
Sending and receiving information
When you are requesting content from the internet, the data request will travel over our network, through the fibre or copper cables to the exchange and on to the Point of Interconnect where your data request is handled by your broadband provider.
Your broadband provider’s system then decides where it can get the information you need:
How we work with your broadband provider
Local Cache
A local cache hosted on your broadband provider’s network. This is usually for popular and regular internet requests like entertainment, for example, streaming a show on Netflix or for software upgrades like IOS 11. You’d be surprised to know that most content is sourced from these local caches.
How we work with your broadband provider
Cloud-based data centre
Data centres house content for local domestic sites like NZ Herald and for transactional-based websites like Amazon, Trade Me, and online banking.
How we work with your broadband provider
International provider networks
This is for content that’s housed outside New Zealand, like when you are trying to buy a pair of shoes from a little online boutique in Sweden.
Accessing content from international provider networks can affect your broadband experience as it can take a long time for the data request and response to whizz around the world and back to you at home in NZ.
Bringing you better broadband
What is broadband?
Put simply, broadband is internet access. If it’s working well you should be experiencing a consistently reliable connection.
We build and maintain our network to bring better broadband to you. And we provide access to our network so broadband providers can sell their broadband plans and packages to you. But there are many factors that can affect your broadband experience, including your home or business set up.
Bringing you better broadband
Why is my internet sometimes slow?
These factors can affect your connection:
• Your broadband plan
• Your modem and WiFi set-up
• The age of your computer or device
• The time of day
• Number of people are using it at at the same time
• High use like gaming and streaming HD TV
• The server you are connecting to (high latency)