Belt - re Nelson - work on the network starts there in October 2008

Within 4 years 80 percent of NZ homes will have this Telecom service

Telecom are already spending $1.4 billion rapidly "cabinetising" all towns and cities in NZ so to me Key's announcement is a non-event.
http://www.chorus.co.nz/cabinetisation

That map is also displayed in the window display of my office - Professionals Real Estate at 338 Pt Chev Rd.
Telecom/Chorus have actually done an amazing job with this first suburb rollout.
They have about 2500 households and 600 businesses in Pt Chev to connect up to the cabinets individually - very labour intensive as each connection done manually by a techie.
Just think if we had not put the pressure on Telecom as a local community we might not have seen this high speed connection for 3 years!
As soon as the cabinet is connected it serves ADSL 2+ but you need a router with this ADSL 2+ capability and will only get the very high speeds at this stage if you are using Xtra as your broadband provider.
Orcon, Ihug etc will have to install their own equipment in the cabinet you are served from in order to get those same speeds, in the meantime your connection to those other providers will be back at the Mt Albert exchange.
My house is about as far away from the cabinet as you can be, yet we are nowl getting 9,000 download and 800 upload - before we were just too far away from the exchange to even bother with internet.
Everyone I know who now has the new fast system up and running is escstatic about the service so good on ya Telecom.

At a meeting of local residents at Pt Chevalier School this evening (Weds 9th April) staff from Telecom and Chorus provided an update of progress with the fast broadband deployment. Read about it at http://voices.realestate.co.nz/ptchev/