Fibre a feature of city's home show

FAST FIBRE: Ultrafast Fibre chief executive William Hamilton speaks to Communications Minister Amy Adams at the official launch of the city's completed fibre network in May. PHOTO/BEVAN CONLEY 150515WCBRCUCOL02

How to take advantage of Wanganui's newest piece of infrastructure will be one focus of the Wanganui Chronicle Home & Lifestyle Show.

Wanganui became the country's first city of its size to have its fibre broadband network completed earlier this year and two of the companies exhibiting at the home show will be pushing its benefits.

Elissa Downey, from fibre broadband retailer MyRepublic, said she wanted to promote the advantages of high speed fibre Wanganui people could now connect to.

"There's just that sort of delay in getting people to step forward into this amazing new world," she said. A lack of awareness was one thing holding people back from broadband. "People have just got used to bad internet and they just accept it."

MyRepublic would also be promoting its partnership programme, which looks for people in the region to help promote its product.

MyRepublic offer 100Mbps download speed and no data cap, which the company believes should be the only way to use fibre.

About 10 per cent of Wanganui properties that can connect to fibre had done so by last month, according to Ultrafast Fibre, which installed and manage the network. It will also be exhibiting at the show.

Meanwhile, all stands have been booked for what will be the sixth annual Wanganui Chronicle Home & Lifestyle Show.

About 20 new exhibitors and a total of 100 are expected to attract more than 10,000 visitors over the two days to the Jubilee Stadium, on August 29-30.

Entry is by gold coin and free for under-18s. It will be open from 9am-5pm on the Saturday and 9am-4pm on Sunday.