NZ Rural internet

30 day risk free guarantee.

Residential internet for rural Waikato and Bay of Plenty. Check if you’re in coverage for fast, reliable wireless and get a 30 day risk-free guarantee.

AWARDSS

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 $650 worth of value, and it’s free on a 12-month term.

You won’t wait

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

30 day risk free guarantee

You have the ability to terminate your service within 30 days, where early termination charges (ETCs) and internet usage charges won’t apply.

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.

try lightwire today with zero risks

Don’t be held back by where you live.

55 Sec

Average Call Wait Time

(last 30 days)

63.7 Mbps

Average Download Speed

(last 30 days – measured at time of install)

99.99%

Average Tower Uptime

(last 30 days – all towers)

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 NZ rural broadband plans here.

WHOLE-HOME WIFI COVERAGE GUARANTEED

Rural internet built by locals, for locals

Connecting Local

9000+ Rural households connected with a 4.6 stars from 300+ 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. 

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. 

4.6

Google Reviews
Rated 4.5 stars by 230 rural families

Based on 300+ reviews

Sarah Alloway
Previously using copper
Read More
I was on copper wires before this, and as a photographer, I literally was unable to send raw files over the web and it was impacting my ability to do my job. We finally decided to go to Lightwire and WOW I am so glad we did. Now I can upload multiple RAW photos at once (previously just one would fail) while watching high definition streamed videos at the same time. Totally worth it.
Michael McKenzie
Previously used Satellite internet
Read More
Moved from satellite internet, to Lightwire and the process has been faultless. Access speeds have always been above expectations, and in two months I have had no connection issues!! Customer support is also fantastic, with local support people. I highly recommend Lightwire!
Sue Burgess
"Extremely happy with Lightwire"
Read More
After months of getting the run around from other service providers saying their cell towers were full and could not provide for us i found Lightwire. A simple online form to fill out, and within a week we had the technician here setting us up. We went with Unlimited internet thats about 30$ more then what we use to pay for 120gb at our last farm so our teenager girls are over the moon. No lagging or taking forever to download or stream. We are extremely happy with Lightwire so glad we found them!!
Ms GabyPreviously with Spark and Vodafone
Read More
So pleased we switched to Lightwire from Vodafone. The service is great and communication is excellent - we get regular emails telling us what's going on with our internet connection and now we have unlimited data which is fantastic.

A rural internet provider who understands rural customers and the issues we have to deal with. Highly recommend if you have thought about changing providers.
Alex Coffey
Alex Coffey
Previously with Starlink
Read More
We never noticed any difference between Lightwire and Starlink with regards to speed. Both provided the same experience. However after a storm, Starlink just stopped working. There was no one to call and no one to come out and trouble shoot, just an online chat centre. Two long internet free weeks later it was up and running again. But by then we realised that the resilience we were seeking wasn’t available from Starlink, and that local service, and kiwis with boots on the ground were the better option. And Lightwire had us up and running about the time the Starlink cable arrived. Not only that, Lightwire have improved their speeds and their resilience on their network. Though I discovered that Lightwire never lost service as a result of Gabrielle. The grass isn’t always greener, and I am happier supporting a New Zealand business and local employer.
Maurice Troy
"Wish we changed to them years ago"
Read More
As a new rural customer of Lightwire we are very happy. The installation went really well and it was all explained clearly to us. Best of all is the communication with Lightwire as they answer and respond very quickly unlike our previous provider who could take up to two hours just to talk to someone. We had our WiFi extended and needed their assistance which they promptly did remotely for us. Wish we had changed to them years ago. Thanks
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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.

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.

Query not here? Check out our knowledge base:

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.