The New Zealand Institute's recent report into broadband development claims that only the incumbent is willing to invest in New Zealand's critical infrastructure.

Vodafone would beg to differ. The company has begun rolling out its own equipment in all of Telecom's exchanges that it can access and will launch unbundled (LLU) services by mid year, says Vodafone's GM of Technology for fixed line, David Diprose.

"We are currently installing 'super IP DSLAMs' from Huawei into the first 15 exchanges to be unbundled. We've already completed the first five of these," says Diprose.

"These DSLAMs are 'super' because in the one cabinet they translate the plain old telephone call into IP, deliver ADSL2+ broadband and deliver VDSL2 broadband. This truly is a next generation network."

VDSL2 technology allows far greater speeds on the existing copper than ADSL, which forms the majority of today's broadband lines in New Zealand.

"All of our DSLAMs come standard with VDSL2 ports so we will offer VDSL2 speeds to 20% of the market at launch."

Customers that connect to these ports will get speeds in the region of 50Mbit/s download and 20Mbit/s up as long as they are within 1 km from the exchange.

The remaining 80% of broadband ports are ADSL2+, This will deliver a maximum of 24Mbit/s down and 1Mbit/s up within 3 km from the exchange. That means on average customers will see 10Mbit/s down depending on the length of the copper and the fibre backhaul.

Vodafone recently announced its cornerstone contract with Vector Communications for fibre backhaul to provision its LLU programme.

"By the end of the year Vodafone will have all 42 exchanges in Auckland unbundled and a further 20 exchanges in other centres as were allowed to, giving us the biggest unbundled network in the country."