Rural Broadband

Do more from here

Residential rural broadband for the Waikato and Bay of Plenty. Check if you’re in coverage for fast, reliable wireless broadband.  

Winner of Best Rural Broadband Provider 2 years in a row

Best Rural Broadband Provider 2022 by the NZ Compare Awards

Don't be held back because of where you live.

Partner with us to make the most of rural living.

55 Sec

Average Call Wait Time

(last 30 days)

64.9 Mbps

Average Download Speed

(last 30 days – measured at time of install)

99.999%

Average Tower Uptime

(last 30 days – all towers)

Best Rural Broadband Provider 2022 by the NZ Compare Awards
Whole Home WiFi Coverage
Smart WiFi
Whole Home WiFi Coverage
Smart WiFi

We care as much as you do.

Here’s why Lightwire makes a great partner for your rural internet and voice needs…

You won’t wait

With an average call wait time below 2 mins, when you need us, you’ll get hold of our local support team quickly.

Safe from inflation

Sign up with us and rest assured that your price won’t increase for the life of your contract term.

Your own portal

Access everything related to your services from one place. Check your data usage, change your plan, pay your bills, refer a friend, and much more.

Visit within 14 days

An installer will visit your property within 14 business days of your order being accepted. 

Free install

A Lightwire installer will come to your house, install a dish on your roof, place a Wi-Fi router and run tests to ensure you are good to go. This is $990 worth of value, and it’s free on a 12-month term.

No Risk

Wireless broadband doesn’t work everywhere. If we can’t get you online then we won’t charge you a cent. 

Flexible rural broadband plans

All Lightwire Rural Fixed Wireless Broadband plans are flexible, meaning you can change your plan at any time.

Not sure how much data you need?

Don’t know how much data you need? That’s okay, you can change your plan after you sign up without penalty via your customer portal. Move to a higher or lower data plan at any time with the click of a button.

 

Learn more about Lightwire’s rural broadband plans here.

You’re guaranteed…

Speed

All you want to do is after a hard day of work is relax, browse the internet, and watch your favourite Netflix series without interruption.

 

Lightwire’s rural broadband comes with guaranteed download speeds, meaning you never have to settle for the buffer ever again.

Fixed price

Inflation is going up, but your price won’t.

 

Sign up with us and rest assured that your price won’t increase for the life of your contract term.

14 Day install

We will get you connected as soon as possible and promise it will take us no longer than 14 days to get to your place.

 

Installs may take longer if you aren’t available to meet with our technician and/or it is unsafe to complete the installation due to weather etc.

We know you’re smart and want to compare providers. We’ve laid out exactly what’s on offer with Lightwire on the Offer Summary page here

How does Lightwire work?

It’s not 4G, 5G, Fibre, or Satellite, it’s Lightwire fixed wireless rural broadband. Towers throughout the Waikato and Bay of Plenty beam internet directly to your house. The result? Fast internet with low latency (lag) allowing you to work from home, stream Netflix, and game with ease. 

Rural internet built by locals, for locals

Connecting Local

9000+ Rural households connected with a 4.5 stars from 234 Google Reviews

Hiring Local

Local people, based in Hamilton, answering your calls in under 1 minute. Meet the team

Supporting Local

140+ local schools, events, and not for profits supported by Lightwire every month. 

Frequently Asked Questions

Your speed will depend on a number of factors, including distance from our nearest tower, the capacity on that tower and how you are connecting to your Lightwire connection from within your house.

When we talk about speed, we are talking about the speed you can get from your Lightwire supplied router back to the speed test server on our network. This is different from the speed you can get over WiFi as the distance from your router or number of other devices connected to the same network affect the speed.

With the above detail taken into account, we see average download speeds of 64.9Mbps across the network, and guarantee a download speed of 10Mbps during peak periods (3pm to 10pm).

This means that if you aren’t getting 10Mbps or better, we will treat this as a speed fault and get it sorted for you.

Lightwire is unique among rural broadband providers in that we go past talking about potential speeds or average speeds – we commit to guaranteed minimum download speeds.

During off-peak periods we commit to providing at least 20Mbps download speeds, and during on-peak times we commit to at least 10Mbps download speeds.

Want to know what guaranteed download speeds mean for you? Read it here.

In designing our plans, we have tried to find a balance between ensuring our costs are covered and keeping your costs as low as possible.

 

When it comes to installation, we need to install a dish on your roof that will point at a tower on a  nearby hill, and install a WiFi router. All of this is done by a Lightwire engineer.

 

If you sign a 12-month term, we do all of this for free.

 

On a 6-month term, we can’t be sure that we will have you with us long enough to earn a return on the cost of the install, so we pass on $490 of the cost as a one-off installation charge.

Lightwire gives you unparalleled flexibility. Regardless of which plan you sign up to, you can upgrade or downgrade that plan at any time without penalty. This is done via your customer portal.

 

Upgrades take effect immediately, and plan downgrades take effect at the start of the following month.

Yes. Lightwire won’t interact with your current internet company to cancel the service for you, that needs to be handled by you directly. 

Unfortunately, even with the use of sophisticated software, we can never be 100% sure that we can connect a service at an address until our installer has attended site and made an attempt.

 

To get you connected we need a clear line of sight between somewhere on your property and one of our towers, and that tower needs to be close enough for the speeds to be acceptable.

 

When you sign up, we know how close you are to a tower, so we are pretty sure that you can connect. Once you lodge an order, our team manually checks whether any hills will get in the way or whether we have seen a failed install at the same (or nearby) address previously. If that all looks good, your order goes to an installer.

 

The last issue we usually see is that of trees. We can’t see these using our software, so it is always the last hurdle to clear.

 

If distance, hills and/or trees aren’t an issue, you are almost certainly able to connect. The best option is to start by lodging an order, there is no cost to you if we can’t get you connected.

Need help deciding?

Chat with us

Our friendly experts can answer any of your rural connectivity questions. 

 

Ask away

give us a call

On average you’ll get a wireless broadband specialist on the phone in less than 2 minutes.

 

0800 12 13 14

email us

Not in a rush? Shoot us an email and we’ll be in touch as soon as possible.

 

sales@lightwire.co.nz

Your internet speeds and service uptime are our top priority.

What’s more, online sign-up for rural broadband is easy.

 

You’ve made a great decision to live rurally. Make another.