It’s not hard to find locals complaining about slow Internet, but good news has finally arrived in the form of a rollout of Ultra Fast Broadband that will finally include Waikawa Beach.
Under the latest extension of the Government’s Ultra-Fast Broadband programme, worldclass broadband will be rolled out to an additional 18 towns in Manawatu-Wanganui.
This will provide approximately 5,000 more Manawatu-Wanganui households and businesses with access to faster, more reliable internet.
New towns & fringe areas:
- Himatangi Beach
- Hokio Beach
- Manakau
- Ohau
- Waikawa Beach
- Waitarere/Waitarere Beach
- [This list has been abbreviated for this blog post. ]
The entire UFB build in Manawatu-Wanganui will be complete by the end of 2022, providing more than 91,000 Manawatu-Wanganui households and businesses with faster internet.
The Government’s total investment in Manawatu-Wanganui UFB connectivity is $104.4 million.
Ultra Fast Broadband (UFB) will mean no waiting for web pages to load, being able to play videos without buffering, and pretty much instantaneous Internet.
Well, anyway, that’s what’s possible — it all depends on the website you’re visiting, the host for the videos, and other factors too, just like travelling on the Expressway: it should be fast, but if traffic’s backed up you’ll have a slow journey.
UFB — Ultra-Fast Broadband explains what UFB is and means:
UFB utilises fibre optic cabling to provide homes, businesses and schools with services such as the Internet and Telephony. The UFB infrastructure will be capable of delivering at least 100 Mbps download (from the Internet to the premises) and 50 Mbps upload (from the premises to the Internet).
So, perhaps within the next 5 years, we won’t be seeing comments like this one from November 2013:
A matter that is of concern is the broadband speeds at Waikawa Beach. I recently sent an email to my provider because I am on broadband but it seems to be consistently slowing down and I wanted to know why.
If we spot any more news about faster broadband here we’ll let you know.
Both Vodafone and Spark could deliver 4G mobile broadband giving better speeds long before 2022. But they won’t. It would be more economic than UFB as residents would not need a physical fibre connection.