How long does it take to get fibre broadband installed?

Getting Fibre installed in New Zealand is now a very quick process for most homes and businesses.

This means in many cases it will be installed and active within a week, and sometimes even in a few days. There are of course situations where it takes longer, which we’ll look at now.

First things first, make sure you get your fibre order placed asap - the sooner you have that placed, the sooner you’ll be connected!

I’ve placed my Fibre order – how long will it take?

After you’ve placed your order, the provisioning team will check if you have an existing Fibre ONT at your place.

They might also discover an existing Fibre connection at your place, perhaps from a previous tenant for example, so they might need to clarify things with you at this point.

If you do have an ONT available, that means they’ll be able to remotely activate your connection.

Usually that will mean that your Fibre broadband connection is activated within a day or so – sometimes even later the same day!

If you don’t yet have an ONT installed in your home or office, they’ll need to schedule in a Fibre install technician for the first available appointment, while still ensuring they have enough time to courier your router to you if you’ve ordered one.

How long does the Fibre installation itself take?

For most residential properties now, the Fibre installers are able to do everything in a single visit.

A typical fibre install to a single dwelling would usually take around 4 hours.

First, they need to “scope” the install method – which just means they’ll discuss and agree with you the best way to get the fibre from your property boundary to inside your home, and where the ONT will be installed.

Next they’ll run that fibre to your house, often surface-mounted in tough protective cabling along under a fence railing for example, and through an agreed point into your home interior.

Then they’ll install the ONT (sometimes they’ll have another technician installing that at the same time), to connect the Fibre up to.

Finally they’ll power it on and test it to make sure it is all good to go!

In most cases this whole process will take around 4 hours.

What about a fibre installation to my apartment, or along my shared driveway?

Of course not everyone lives in standalone homes with street frontage – many of us live on shared driveways, or in apartment blocks for example.

In these cases, fibre installations take a little longer for the first person to get connected in that location, and any subsequent neighbour can get connected very quickly.

This is because if fibre has not yet been run down your shared driveway fenceline for example, they’ll need to make sure all the impacted neighbours are ok with what is proposed, before carrying out any fibre build work that is required. This is what is known as the fibre consents process.

Once they can go ahead, in most cases they’ll be able to get that done in a scheduled day, and often you can get your home and ONT connected that same day - or within a few days if not.

Likewise, with an apartment block, the scoper will meet with the property owner and agree on an install method for the building. This usually means that they’ll then schedule in the required build work for the earliest suitable date, which may be as soon as the following week or so.

Depending on the size of the apartment building, the work required may be done in a day, or take multiple days of build work to complete for a larger building.

Any apartment tenants would then be able to get connected very quickly following the completion of this build work.

Once they’ve placed their fibre order, a technician would be scheduled in the next few days usually to come out and connect from the box on their floor to an ONT in their apartment. This would in most cases take just a couple of hours.