27 Mar 2020

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Christchurch fibre broadband network provider, Enable, says it is fully prepared for continuing to deliver essential fibre broadband services to the community during the COVID-19 lockdown.

Enable serves the greater Christchurch area including towns in Waimakariri and Selwyn districts. Its customers include many essential businesses and organisations that will need to be open to support the community through the lockdown.

Thousands of local families are depending on Enable fibre broadband internet connections to work from home, learn online, be entertained and connected with loved ones through this challenging time.

“We’ve been working for several weeks to ensure our business is ready for a community-wide lockdown. We are a lifeline utility and essential service provider which means our business needs to remain open through this time to serve our community,” said Enable Chief Executive Steve Fuller.

“Our business continuity plans have been activated and we have moved our business to a working from home model in support of our key priority of keeping our community and our people safe. We can operate all functions of our organisation under this new model with added safety precautions.

“We are fully focused on continuity of service and are actively monitoring our network performance and will prioritise fault repairs during this time.

“We have plenty of network capacity in place – so we want to reassure customers that our network can handle multiple people using their broadband at the same time. ‘’

A significant number of customers have contacted Enable to check if their fibre connection will go ahead and there has been a spike in interest in connecting to fibre broadband on Enable’s website.

“The safety and wellbeing of our community is our number one priority and we have introduced new controls for all our ongoing work carried out by our contract partners, in line with Government recommendations for essential businesses,” said Mr Fuller.

“We are only undertaking essential field activity work during the COVID-19 Level 4 Alert period. We are conscious of the need to support our community to play their role to stop the spread of COVID-19 by staying at home – and a fast, reliable fibre broadband internet connection is a big part of this and we need to balance this with what is essential now.”

Enable is prioritising connections that are required in support of the provision of essential services to our community and will deliver these services in a safe way, including to those customers who have no internet access or need better connectivity to allow them to work from home and learn online for our children.

Enable is wholly owned by Christchurch City Holdings Limited, the commercial arm of Christchurch City Council.