Well the second Internet Service Provider (ISP) Vodafone/IHug in New Zealand has completed rollouts of their own equipment in 19 Auckland exchanges as part of unbundling of the local loop and they plan to continue doing so to other areas of New Zealand.

The ADSL2+ technology used offers a theoretical speed of up to 24 megabits per second, although this drops off the further away the customer is from the exchange. The more interesting thing to understand is the speed of the backhaul from the exchange to the ISP. ie: you may have an excellent sync speed to the DSLAM/exchange, however your throughput/performance may still be very average - I wonder when more focus and investment on the backhaul's will happen?

So below is my Sync speeds to the DSLAM, and the throughput test from home to Wellington - Citylink (via www.speedtest.net).

We have come a long way since the days of dial-up, however broadband is still IMHO overpriced and the speed/datacap offered to standard New Zealanders is very average.

Update - 09 June 2008

Speed test from work is _slightly_ better :-)