The number of people connected to the Government's ultra-fast broadband grew by 40 per cent in the last three months of 2013, bringing the total amount of users hooked up to almost 20,000.
This is about 5.5 per cent of the 363,000 people who could connect to the fibre infrastructure at December 31 last year, a rate of uptake which the Government sees as being in line with overseas examples of this type of project.
This rate of uptake is slightly up from the last quarter, where it sat at around 4.4 per cent.
Communications and Information Technology Minister Amy Adams said today more than 25 per cent of the UFB project is now complete.
The ultra-fast broadband scheme, which uses a mixture of taxpayer and private sector funds, aims to offer 75 per cent of the country internet speeds of 100 megabits per second by 2019.
In a separate programme, the rural broadband initiative, 179,000 homes and businesses outside of major centres can connect to wireless broadband and 60,000 to improve copper-line internet.
- By Hamish Fletcher of the New Zealand Herald
