This varies by what type of service and plan you order.  We recommend you choose the fastest connection you can get at your house, but won't stop you if you want to choose a slower one.  Note that Fibre plans have specific speeds associated with the plan you choose, and some will be faster than others.

ADSL and VDSL connections will generally be much slower than the speeds above, as these services are strongly affected by the distance between your house and your local exchange.

It's important to remember that all our Residential broadband plans are "best efforts".  This means that we will do our best to supply you with the speeds listed above, but can't offer any guarantees because any of the following factors that are outside our control may affect your speeds:

• The distance between the exchange or roadside cabinet and your property (ADSL/VDSL only)
• The quality of the copper phone lines to your house (ADSL/VDSL only)
• The quality of your house's internal wiring (ADSL/VDSL only-if you select the $250 "I need wiring" option on your order form, this shouldn't be an issue)
• The number of other people in your area also using the internet
• The capabilities of your router or modem
• If you are using Wifi, the distance from your device to your router, or obstructions between your device and your router
• The capabilities of your computer or device
• The number of devices connected to your router or WiFi network
• Network-intensive activity from other devices on your router or WiFi network, like downloading/uploading large files or streaming video
• Overall network performance (e.g. network congestion at a regional, national or global level) 
• The specific site or service you are trying to reach

* Note that in particular, our Fibre MAX plan (referred to by our network partners as "Gigabit" or Fibre 950/450) may never be as fast as the speeds in the name suggest.  While you will see speeds much faster than any of our other plans (assuming none of the other factors above are slowing your connection down) we don't claim that you will ever, or even often, see speeds of 950Mbps down and 450Mbps up. Our testing indicates you are more likely to see download speeds of 300-800Mbps and upload speeds of 80-250Mbps under typical conditions over Ethernet, and up to 950 Mbps down/450 Mbps up under ideal conditions.  This is due to factors outside our control to do with how Fibre services are supplied in New Zealand, but we are always working towards trying to make your connection as fast as it can be. 

If your connection seems slower than it should be, please refer to our slow speed troubleshooting guide or talk to us and we'll help you investigate your options.

If speed is really important to you, we do have a range of business grade services with guaranteed minimum speeds and a corresponding higher price. Talk to us if you'd like to know more about these.