As part of the Rural Broadband Initiative, Vodafone will be responsible for delivering broadband community coverage to rural New Zealand at peak speeds of 5Mbps or better. In order to deliver this, Vodafone will be building open access towers and equipping them with state-of-the-art wireless technology.
More than 150 new cell towers will be built in rural areas, with the New Zealand government funding the infrastructure (the actual towers) while Vodafone provides the electronics.
Once built, the Vodafone-managed towers will be opened up to competition and other wireless operators will be able to put their equipment on the towers. Vodafone will also offer wholesale services to operators that don’t want to provide their own electronic hardware to enable them to offer their own branded services.
Vodafone will also make use of over 380 existing towers upgrading equipment at our own cost to deliver the service.
Vodafone will provide a wholesale product for broadband and home phone, selling a wireless router which includes a wireless broadband connection, telephony service, WiFi and Ethernet networking capabilities. A roof antenna is included for houses that require it, due to distance or geography.
In order to maintain high quality service, Vodafone will manage testing of any new hardware before retail service providers are able to bring it to market.
