In November last year Vodafone launched FibreX – the long anticipated technology upgrade to its cable-fibre network in Wellington, Kapiti and Christchurch.

The upgrade is Vodafone’s response to the unprecedented surge in average household data consumption over recent years. The upgrade provides a massive speed and capability boost across the network, up to eight times faster than before.

More than 12 months and $22 million in the making, the FibreX network upgrade involved a significant overhaul of the existing cable-fibre infrastructure. Two cutting-edge technologies have been combined into one, super-charging the existing fibre optic lines.

Vodafone Technology Director, Tony Baird, explains: “The first technology innovation is Huawei’s ‘distributed network architecture’ – which essentially involves taking powerful transmission technology from the local exchange and bringing it out to the street cabinets.

“The second technology innovation is DOCSIS 3.1 – the latest generation of this standard – which allows the final cable of the network (between the cabinet and a customer’s home) to carry vastly more data than before through improved signal modulation,” said Tony.

The distributed network architecture treats all signals as digital IP from Vodafone’s core, and fires them down the fibre optic line all the way to the cabinet using 10GPON technology.

Sending this signal as a digital signal allows much more data to be sent compared to an analogue signal. It also helps eliminate signal deterioration.

“The result is a powerful ultra-fast broadband experience of up to 800Mbps download and 100Mbps upload, straight into the home.

“This is great news for busy families who want to stream video content, browse the internet and download big files simultaneously, without lag or buffering,” Tony said.

Don and Mary Pullen were among the first to benefit from the FibreX upgrade in Christchurch. Their grandson Reilly is an avid gamer and visits them often to take advantage of their unlimited fixed-line internet connection.

Don Pullen loves the visits – but Reilly’s gaming hobby gobbled up most of the available bandwidth. This wouldn’t be such a problem if Don didn’t have an online business to run!

“Ultra-fast broadband isn’t available in our area so we were keen to see if FibreX could make a difference – I just want everyone to be happy,” said Don.

Within a couple of days of placing an order, the Pullen’s welcomed Downer technicians into their home and were up and running on a FibreX gigabit plan within 45 minutes.

“We’re really pleased with the outcome, we’re getting speeds of up to 700Mbps and most importantly, Reilly can sit next to me in the study and play his computer game – and I can get on with my business. It’s much faster now,” he said.