New Zealanders finally may be warming to ultra-fast broadband, with Chorus saying March was the second-biggest month to date for UFB connections.
At March 31, there were 75,000 fibre connections nationwide, up from 65,000 at the end of December.
However, the lines company said in its quarterly report yesterday the uptake varied widely from area to area.
In Dunedin, 50% of the build had been completed and nearly 14% of those able to connect had done so.
But in Ashburton, Blenheim, Oamaru and Taupo, where 100% of the UFB build had been completed, the numbers were starkly different.
Ashburton had 12% connected, Blenheim was the highest in the country at 16.9%, Oamaru was at 9% and Taupo was slightly above 4%.
Over all New Zealand, the figure was 12.8% uptake with only Blenheim, Timaru, Palmerston North, Auckland and Dunedin above the national average.
Chorus said total fixed line connections increased by 1000 in the three months ended March to 1.197 million.
The Chorus UFB community build was 40% complete with 439,000 end users now able to connect.
Significantly more UFB orders were received in February and March.
Service providers continued to focus on taking costs out and providing alternatives to legacy products, Chorus said.
And service provider competition was expected to increase following the M2 acquisition of Callplus and 2Degrees buying Snap.
Growth in online content offerings continued with Spark's free Lightbox and the launch of Sky Network Television's Neon and Netflix New Zealand.
