Three local fibre companies will now be offer a 1 gigabit product for residential properties in Tauranga on the Ultra-Fast Broadband network.

local fibre companies Ultrafast Fibre, Enable and Northpower Fibre will offer the new Residential Only BS2a 1G/500Mbps service from October 1.

File Photo.

Communications Minister Amy Adams has welcomed the news which was announced on Friday.

'Since the Government launched the UFB initiative in 2009, broadband has become faster and cheaper, and those benefits have been made increasingly available to New Zealanders. Today's announcement is the next big step forward to even faster speeds,” says Amy.

'Faster speeds means people can use the internet in ways that were never possible before, creating more innovation and productivity from the Government's $1.35 billion investment into the UFB.”

UFB has been designed to handle the demands of faster speeds and higher capacity, and the 1Gbps speeds are ten times faster than the Government's benchmark policy product of 100 Mbps from the original UFB tender.

The 1Gbps speeds also puts New Zealand on par with many leading markets, including South Korea, Japan, Singapore and parts of the United States.

'This means our exporters can compete in the global digital economy, creating jobs and higher wages,” says Amy.

There is strong demand for the faster UFB plans already available. Between March and June 2016, 87 per cent of new residential connections were for 100 Megabits per second or more. Nine per cent of new residential connections are already for 200Mbps or above.

'There are already over 3700 active residential 1 Gigabit services in New Zealand, and I expect to this grow with the residential gigabit to be available in a third of all 33 UFB candidate areas.

'LFCs have announced wholesale products. I encourage the industry to collaborate to offer gigabit plans at retail level on attractive terms,” says Amy.

Along with Tauranga the 1Gbps service will be available in Whangarei, Hamilton, Cambridge, Te Awamutu, Tokoroa, New Plymouth, Hawera, Whanganui, Christchurch, Lincoln, Rangiora, and Dunedin.

BENEFITS OF 1GBPS:

The high-speed internet service of 1Gbps means:

• Instantly access online movies, music and games
• Easily connect to the cloud and high-definition videoconferencing services
• Download 25 songs in a second, a TV show in four seconds or any high-definition movie within 34 seconds
• Download a 8000 word processing documents in a second
• Restore 1 terabyte hard drive in 2.5 hours

Communications Minister Amy Adams. File Photo.