Crown Fibre Holdings, the holding company charged with building out New Zealand's Ultra-Fast Broadband Initiative, is getting close to finalizing contracts with three regional fiber service providers.
After whittling down the proposals it received to a shortlist of fourteen, Crown Fibre has chosen NorthPower (Whangarei area), the Central North Island Fibre Consortium (Hamilton, Tauranga, Cambridge, Te Awamutu, Tokoroa, New Plymouth, Hawera and Wanganui), and Alpine Energy (Timaru) to negotiate final network contracts.
At the same time, Telecom New Zealand, which previously considered spinning off its network to participate in the UFB initiative and has also made the shortlist for all markets that the UFB initiative will reach, reiterated its nationwide proposal. In addition to structurally separating its company, Telecom New Zealand said that it would be willing to work any public and private fiber network owners, including the three finalists.
For more:
- Telecompaper has this article
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