"Alcatel-Lucent believes strongly that broadband can be a powerful catalyst for innovation, and social and economic development," says Sean O’Halloran, President and Managing Director, Alcatel-Lucent ANZ.

For O’Halloran was speaking following news that Chorus has selected IP routing technology from Alcatel-Lucent to build the IP core network that will power its ‘Chorus Accelerate’ program, which will offer customers an entirely new set of broadband services over both copper and fibre networks.

”Chorus recognises the significant value that better broadband will have for New Zealand," O’Halloran adds.

"The XRS will provide a reliable and efficient platform for the continued growth broadband demand enabled by ‘Chorus Accelerate’ in New Zealand.”

Chorus will deploy the Alcatel-Lucent 7950 Extensible Routing System (XRS) to support a multi-million New Zealand dollar investment in its core infrastructure to handle the increased bandwidth demand created by the program.

With its ability to handle up to 16 Terabits of data per second, the 7950 XRS has the capacity necessary to support high bandwidth broadband services like high definition video and cloud applications.

Chorus is the first Asia-Pacific telecommunications provider to deploy Alcatel-Lucent’s 7950 XRS, which will pave the way for a new portfolio of ‘Chorus Accelerate’ broadband products for existing customers, new customers, high bandwidth users and business with committed bandwidth rates of 100Mbps.

“Alcatel-Lucent’s 7950 XRS is playing a significantly role in helping us give our customers the greater speeds, more choices and better value," says Mark Ratcliffe, CEO, Chorus NZ.

Consuming a single Watt per Gigabit of traffic, the 7950 XRS helps deliver these services at an eco-sustainable manner.

An international study by Bell Laboratories found that ultra-fast broadband has the potential to generate $33 billion in productivity benefits over 20 years for New Zealand.