Many more NZ towns should become 'gigatowns' within months.

Christchurch, Hamilton and Whangarei are set to join Dunedin in having gigabit ultrafast broadband from October with other cities unlikely to be far behind.

Google, which promotes gigabit broadband in the United States, says the speed should be sufficient to let five people in a household stream HD movies without buffering "and still have enough bandwidth to email and surf the web".

Ultrafast broadband (UFB) network companies Enable, Northpower Fibre and Hamilton-based Ultrafast Fibre announced they would start wholesaling ultrafast broadband plans with 1 gigabit download speeds and 500 megabit upload speeds from October 1.

That is five times the speed internet providers can offer on fibre to most consumers today.

The three network companies – which are together building about 30 per cent of the UFB network – will charge about a $20-a-month premium for the faster speed, over their 100Mb services.

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The premium consumers will pay for gigabit broadband may be higher than that as internet providers can expect to pay for extra international and domestic capacity to serve more data-hungry consumers.

Internet provider MyRepublic was the first to announce retail pricing, saying it would offer gigabit broadband for $59.99 for the first six months and then $119.99 for the remaining 18 months of a two-year contract.

Spark expected to starting testing a gigabit service in Christchurch over Enable's fibre network within a few weeks.

Chorus – which is building the remaining 70 per cent of the UFB network – was not currently scheduled to make gigabit broadband generally available in the cities where it is laying UFB – such as Auckland and Wellington – until next year, MyRepublic marketing manager Nicholas Keegan said.

But Taryn Hamilton, consumer manager at Vocus – New Zealand's third largest internet provider – expected a gigabit service from Chorus would "not be far away".

"I would be very surprised if it was as late as next year," he said.

Vocus owns the Slingshot, Orcon and Flip internet brands.

Hamilton said the move by the other three UFB network companies had "definitely put the heat on Chorus to pull its plans forward".

Chorus spokesman Nathan Beaumont confirmed it was "currently consulting with the industry about gigabit services".

Chorus is already wholesaling gigabit broadband – at no extra charge – to customers in Dunedin through its Gigatown initiative.

Hamilton said Orcon customers in Dunedin were consuming internet data quite differently from other customers.

"'Gigabit broadband is just that next level. Their usage patterns make pretty interesting reading – they are just smashing through it."

Vodafone said last year that it would start offering gigabit broadband on its separate cable networks in Wellington and Christchurch by the "middle of this year" but has not provided a further update as to the timing.

WHOLESALE PRICES

Enable (Christchurch): $60/month

Northpower Fibre (Whangarei): $59.95/month

Ultafast Fibre (Hamilton): $55/month

Wholesale prices are for 1 gigabit down, 500 Mbits up, with guaranteed ("committed information rate") of 2.5Mbits/second and exclude GST.