New connectivity funding for more rural homes and businesses

Of this $60 million investment, $43 million will be used to improve network capacity and speeds where rural users have been experiencing slow broadband speeds.

Together with the Rural Capacity Upgrades announced in February, over $90 million has now been allocated towards upgrading the capacity of rural networks, to be rolled out over the next 3 years.

Homes, businesses to benefit from upgrade to rural broadband(external link) — beehive.govt.nz

In addition, $15 million of the new funding will go towards a new initiative called the Remote Users Scheme. This scheme will aim to provide broadband services to New Zealanders in some of the country’s most remote locations – those who right now have no coverage, or only have voice calling and text messaging services.

Work is underway to finalise the details of this new scheme and more information is expected to be available later this year.

This new funding also includes provision for an additional $2 million to extend the Marae Digital Connectivity initiative for up to 2 years. The additional funding will allow for more eligible marae to benefit from an initiative that has so far connected more than 560 marae to broadband.

Read the Minister’s press release:

New connectivity funding for more rural homes and businesses(external link) — beehive.govt.nz