The Rural Broadband Initiative (RBI) will bring new fibre optic powered broadband to around 750 schools across New Zealand. Along the way, RBI grant winners Chorus and Vodafone will be upgrading their existing networks to improve connectivity to surrounding communities.

Chorus is the infrastructure division of Telecom New Zealand and is likely to be its own company soon, as a result of the voluntary demerger of Telecom. After the split, Chorus will be responsible for providing ADSL service on a wholesale basis to more than 900,000 New Zealanders, via retail providers like Telecom, Vodafone, Orcon, Snap, and many others.
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Chorus is the infrastructure division of Telecom New Zealand, and is likely to be spun off in to its own company in the near future. Chorus maintains physical plant like copper and fibre optic cables, buildings, and cabinets.

A cabinet is typically a metal enclosure mounted on a concrete plinth which aggregates copper lines from an area called a sub-loop. Inside the cabinet is a copper distribution frame, and some active equipment. Installing a cabinet helps shorten the length of the copper between an end user and an Exchange building, by bringing some equipment from the exchange closer to the end users. Active equipment inside the cabinet can be a basic TDM multiplexer, allowing 30 analogue voice circuits to be transited across a single pair of copper as E1, or an advanced ISAM, or Intelligent Services Access Manager – a device allowing voice and xDSL services across sub-loop circuits.

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