Within the last year Chorus, the fibre company that provides Ultra Fast Fibre (UFB) across Auckland, Wellington, most of the South Island and many other towns, has made some big changes to its UFB speeds, and the other Local Fibre Companies (LFC) have followed suit to at least some degree. Here’s a breakdown of UFB products by LFC.
Chorus Small Business Fibre (SBF)
Before we get stuck into Small Business Fibre (SBF), here is a reminder of a few key definitions to help this make sense…
- Bitstream 2 (BS2) Evolve, and SME Max are the entry-level fibre service Chorus offers, all with weak SLAs, and fault restore targets are 1-2 days, but it is fast and low cost.
- BS2 SBF = the same as above except that it has a Business Restore service level agreement, targeting a ~6-hour restore.
- All speeds reference Mbps unless stated otherwise.
- Max means best effort up to 1 Gbps
In an attempt to stay ahead of the threat posed by the 5G services sold by Spark and Vodafone eating away at Chorus’ market share, Chorus recently:
- Increased the speed of its entry-level SBF service from 100 Mbps to a symmetrical 500 Mbps.
- Got rid of 200/200 Evolve
- That means that the lowest-cost small business service we now offer over the Chorus network is 500/500, and it carries the Business Restore SLA
At Lightwire, here is what we did in response to these changes.
Please keep in mind that the following relates to Chorus services only, but the good news is that when this change took effect last year, we responded with:
- Updating our rate card to make the 500/500 SBF service our entry-level service, sold at the same rate as our 100/100 service had been offered at.
- Migrated all our 100/100 evolve services to 500/500 SBF
- Offering new Max/500 services from Chorus at a reduced rate, the same price as 200/200 services were previously offered at.
- Offering to drop the existing Max/500 service price on a term re-sign.
- All 200/200 services can be moved to Max/500 with no change in price on a new contract term.
Ultrafast Broadband Bitstream 2
Enable & Tuatahi First Fibre
The other two major providers have made similar moves with their new baseline service offering 300/300 speeds. In the areas where these services are offered, we made the following changes:
- We updated our rate card to make the 300/300 BS2 service our entry-level service, sold at the same rate as our 100/100 service had been offered.
- All existing 100/100 services were moved to 300/300
- New Max/500 services from Enable and TFF will be provided at a reduced rate, aligning with those from Chorus.
- Offered Max/500 services to have the new price applied on a term re-sign.
- All 200/200 services can be moved to Max/500 with a drop in price on a new contract term.
Summarising the changes for BS2 services offered by Lightwire.
Pricing
There are two key sets of price points to be aware of:
- The price points that the UFB carriers offer wholesale services to the market at, and;
- The price at which wholesale service aggregators like Lightwire provide services at
Direct from the source
If you are going to buy services directly from the various UFB carriers, you can find the pricing in any number of publicly available locations, but probably the most comprehensive is the Crown Infrastructure resource found at: https://www.crowninfrastructure.govt.nz/wp-content/uploads/Chorus-UFB-Price-Caps-1-July-2020-v2.pdf
There are however a number of other services now on offer that are not subject to regulated price caps, and in the case of Chorus, these can be found here: https://company.chorus.co.nz/sites/default/files/downloads/chorus-ufb-services-agreement-price-list-2021-10.pdf
Those lists can be a bit overwhelming, there is a lot of detail, with much of it not being particularly relevant. This is one of the reasons why many AU telcos prefer to simplify NZ procurement by working with a 3rd party aggregator (or in less stuffy terms, a NZ telco partner.
Wholesale pricing via Lightwire
The circuit pricing will vary depending on whether you are taking services at layer 2 or 3, and total cost for services will depend on whether you are:
- Taking services at Layer 2 with a protected trans-Tasman service back to a DC Australia
- Taking Layer 2 services but having them handed off at a single NZ PoP
- Just keeping it simple and buying all services at layer 3 (unlimited data and Lightwire Static IP address included (/31 or PPPoE))
Circuit pricing
There are too many service speed and term options, so for simplicity, we’ll tell you to defer to our Rate Card, available in illume for download or by request from your account manager (or future account manager if you’re not yet a partner ours). They can be contacted at sales@lightwirebusiness.com
Lightwire can bill in AUD via Lightwire Australia Pty Ltd or NZD via Lightwire Ltd. The nominal amount is the same in either case.
Circuit pricing
There are too many service speed and term options, so for simplicity, we’ll tell you to defer to our Rate Card, available in illume for download or by request from your account manager (or future account manager if you’re not yet a partner ours). They can be contacted at sales@lightwirebusiness.com
Lightwire can bill in AUD via Lightwire Australia Pty Ltd or NZD via Lightwire Ltd. The nominal amount is the same in either case.
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Other carriers and their products
Electricity Ashburton
Service design and speeds largely align with UFB norms, you’ll find the same familiar BS2, BS3 and BS4 alignment, just with some different terminology. Great price points and speed combinations that present an excellent pairing with Chorus services in the region for diverse carrier access.
Lightwire Rural
NZ’s largest independent wireless network operator with a fixed wireless network covering most of the non-metro address points in the rural area known as the “Golden Triangle”, that being the three major centres of Auckland – Hamilton – Tauranga.
Unison
Unison typically follows Chorus’ lead when it comes to pricing and product specs, and this was the case in recent months as they ramped up their speeds. This is because Chorus’ network overlaps their own, so to stay relevant, Unison must remain in the ballpark regarding speed/price.
A 500/500 BS2 service is our entry-level Unison service, with a Max/500 service also available. These services present a fantastic carrier diverse, low cost and high capacity secondary service where available.
One NZ / Vodafone fibre
One NZ (previously Vodafone) offers Dark Fibre at competitive rates along with P2P BS4-type ethernet services that make for good diverse access options for enterprise customers. The One NZ network is extensive, popping up to some degree in almost every NZ town. However, much of the network is legacy copper and HFC, so access to suitable speeds is not always a given.
Vector fibre
They missed out on a UFB contract and have never seen fit to change service speeds or pricing to match the new reality on the ground, leaving their services only relevant for inter-DC connectivity
Other Chorus stuff (CRT, DFAS, VDSL and Data Centre Connect)
Chorus kicked off with a significant copper network when it emerged from the structural separation with Spark, but VDSL is being progressively phased out as other services surpass it in terms of coverage and speed. It is rare to see a VDSL service provisioned in 2022.
Direct Fibre Access is the Dark Fibre service offered by Chorus. It gives you direct control of the optics, allowing you to significantly tailor your offering by changing your equipment at each end of the service. If you don’t have equipment in the local exchange, you can purchase our Intra Candidate Area Backhaul Service (ICABS) to connect to equipment in another exchange. However, ICABS is where the costs can blow out, so DFAS is best used between two Chorus exchanges.
Chorus Data Centre Connect connects selected data centres with high-performance optical transport equipment that’s inside the DC via either a 10 G or 100 G connection.
Lastly we have CRT, which stands for Chorus Regional Transport, which is an inter-metro backhaul service that runs up to 100 Gbps
