Aotea broadband delays annoy

BY ESTHER LAUAKI

Despite being Porirua's most recently-established suburb, Aotea is being left behind the times as Telecom struggles to provide broadband internet.

Residents have been told there may be up to a two-year wait for broadband coverage to some areas of Aotea, and the suburb's developer Carrus Corporation Limited says it has been fielding complaints from residents for some time.

"The problem first surfaced about a year ago," said Carrus' project manager Collin Russel.

"People were having problems connecting [broadband] in their homes and they were coming to us because they kept getting inconclusive answers from Telecom."

At one point there were six households who waited several months to get broadband connected, he said.

"Some people have been told they could wait up to two years, some were told a year, others were told next month."

He said Telecom was able to install a new cabinet in the area to service some houses last year. However, as the development expands further into Aotea, the problem will arise again and again.

"We're trying to provide high standards in all areas of our developments and in this case we've been let down by Telecom. They've told us they will upgrade the current programme in April but, given the information Telecom is providing to residents, we have got concerns that they may not meet the programme," Mr Russel said.

Porirua Mayor Jenny Brash has received complaints from residents about the issue.

"It's absolutely not good enough that the phone service to home-owners in Aotea is sub-standard," she said. Ms Brash said she will be writing to Telecom's chief executive.

Telecom's head of community relations Paul Leslie, told Kapi-Mana News there was a shortage of broadband cables in Aotea but the company is working to expand the network next month.

"We've already upgraded all the exchanges in Porirua [Porirua East, Titahi Bay, Whitby, Waitangirua, Plimmerton] except Pukerua Bay which is scheduled for next year.

"The situation in Aotea is that we have a cabinet installed that has broadband equipment in it, but has run out of capacity.

"There are no issues with telephone lines from that cabinet, so new customers can get a phone line, but not broadband at the present time. This is a short term lack-of-capacity issue"

Mr Leslie said Telecom is installing a new cabinet to provide immediate broadband capacity in the area followed by an upgrade of the network to provide faster broadband to be rolled out in October, so all telephone lines for existing and future homes in the subdivision would have broadband available.

- Kapi-Mana News