The vast majority of rural New Zealand is being promised it will have access to ultra-fast broadband within six years.

Communications and Information Technology Minister, Steven Joyce, announced this week the government had signed a deal with Telecom and Vodafone to roll out its $285 million Rural Broadband Initiative.

The plan is to get broadband with 5 Megabit per second peak speeds to 86 percent of rural homes and businesses over the next six years.  

In addition to extending the country’s fibre network by more than 3000 kilometres, 154 new cell phone towers will be built and 380 cell towers upgraded to allow fixed wireless broadband for rural customers.

Steven Joyce says the Initiative will also see 700 rural schools connected to the fibre network.

Rural Women New Zealand national president Liz Evans says this will make a huge difference to rural life, and says she hopes the government can come up with an innovative solution for those who will be missed by the Initiative. 

“Obviously we welcome the Vodafone and Telecom initiative and hope they get on with it as quickly as they can, and that it achieves what we’re told it will achieve in terms of fast internet broadband for rural communities, especially rural schools, and that it’s going to be at a reasonable price.”

Federated Farmers president Don Nicolson said this week’s announcement was the culmination of three years of lobbying from the Feds which convinced the government’s to grow its budget from $50 to $285 million.

He says the project will finally put rural New Zealand on an even footing with the main cities. 

“It’s way overdue I mean we don’t want to be considered second rate citizens in our own country why shouldn’t our community our people have exactly the same as people in urban, you know in the built up areas of New Zealand.

“A lot of the use is social but famers are businesses, we have families and we can make great use of better connectivity.”

However, the Labour Party is calling for the project to be put on ice after the man who they say designed it, Bruce Parkes, was named in the High Court’s anti-competition ruling against Telecom this week.

Telecom was fined a record $12 million dollars.