The copper network is being switched off by 2028. If you are rural, this is your notice.

Chorus connections update for the quarter to 31 March 2026, and its NZX statement bringing the retirement date forward. The rural figure is ours, by subtraction — 53,000 total less roughly 1,000 in Chorus fibre areas and 3,000 in other local fibre company zones. Treat it as an order of magnitude, not a headcount.

Chorus said the change reflects declining demand and regulatory change. Both are real. Copper connections fell 14% in a single quarter, and the March 2026 quarter was the first since 2013 in which Chorus’s total fixed-line connections grew — fibre additions finally outrunning copper losses.

The regulatory half matters more for rural readers. In 2025 the Commerce Commission recommended removing access regulation from copper outside the fibre footprint, on the reasoning that satellite and wireless had ended the natural monopoly that justified regulating it twenty years ago. Telecommunications Commissioner Tristan Gilbertson put it plainly: the days of regulating copper because it was the only choice are gone.

Starlink is named in that reasoning. The Commission cited it as the most recent example of better-performing, lower-cost services reaching rural consumers. In other words: the arrival of satellite is part of why the copper regulation is being lifted, which is part of why the network can now be retired.

The Copper Withdrawal Code was written to protect consumers during the urban copper phase-out. It works: six months’ notice from Chorus, four from your telco, and copper cannot be removed until an equivalent fibre service is actually available at your address.

That last protection does not help you if there is no fibre coming. The Code was built around fibre replacement, and the Commission itself acknowledged that rural consumers outside the fibre footprint were not covered by it. Its recommendation was explicitly to extend CWC-type protections into non-fibre areas — which is an admission that, as things stood, they did not exist there.

Whether that extension is in place for your address is worth asking your provider directly, because the answer determines how much warning you get and what has to be available before your line goes.

Commerce Commission draft report and Gilbertson statements, 2025; the final recommendation went to the Minister for Media and Communications. We are describing the shape of the protections, not giving legal advice — if you are affected, the Commission and your retailer are the places to confirm your position.

This is the part that gets lost, and it is the genuine loss in the switch. A traditional copper landline draws its power from the exchange. When your house loses electricity, the phone still works.

Nothing replacing it does that. Fibre needs mains power at your end. Fixed wireless needs mains power. Starlink needs mains power — and roughly 25–40 watts of it continuously. In a rural power cut, every one of your replacement options goes dark with the lights.

Remote residents raised exactly this with RNZ during the consultation, and it is not a hypothetical: one interviewee had no mobile signal at all and made calls over Wi-Fi. If that is your situation, the copper line genuinely is a lifeline and its replacement is not equivalent.

What to actually do about it: keep a charged mobile if you have any signal at all; consider a UPS or a small battery for your router and dish; and if you have no cell coverage, look seriously at satellite texting — One NZ and Spark both run it, and a phone with line of sight to the sky works when the tower and the exchange are both down.

And there is a statutory scheme almost nobody mentions. The Commerce Commission’s 111 Contact Code, in force since November 2020, requires your retail provider to give you a means of contacting 111 during a power failure, free of charge, if you qualify as a vulnerable consumer. It covers services delivered over copper, fibre, fixed wireless, HFC and satellite — so it does not stop applying because you moved to Starlink.

You qualify if you are at particular risk of needing 111 for health, safety or disability reasons and have no means of calling during an outage — or no means that works for a continuous eight hours. Providers ask for evidence, typically a Notice of Potential Medically Dependent Consumer form certified by a hospital or GP, and you can apply on somebody else’s behalf or nominate a contact person. Every major retailer runs a vulnerable-consumer register; ask yours.

Commerce Commission 111 Contact Code, published November 2020 and referenced in the retail terms of One NZ, Spark, 2degrees and others. There is also a separate Vulnerable Consumer Code from the Telecommunications Forum (May 2025), a voluntary industry code giving registered consumers priority for provisioning and repair on fixed-line services. Neither is means-tested on income — they turn on medical and safety need.

One more thing worth asking about, with a caveat. The government ran a Remote Users Scheme offering one-off grants of up to $2,000 toward the setup and installation cost of a broadband solution, for households in the most remote areas with no connectivity or only voice and text. Eligibility was broad in a useful way: owner-occupied and tenanted dwellings, multiple residences on one property, farmhouses occupied by share farmers, and occupied dwellings on Māori land.

We cannot tell you whether it is still open, and we are not going to guess. The government’s own page — last edited in May 2026 — now describes the scheme almost entirely in the past tense (“were able to apply”, “the Scheme was also available”), while the how-to-apply sections were left in the present. That is what a closed scheme looks like when only half the page gets rewritten. The grants were also first-come-first-served “up to the remaining funding available” from a $15 million pool.

If you are in that position, ring and ask rather than trusting any summary, including this one. A scheme that has closed still tells you what to ask your provider and your council for.

The Commission’s position is that 97% of remaining copper users have three alternatives. Here they are, with what the government measured for each.

Commerce Commission, Measuring Broadband New Zealand Report 28 (published July 2026, testing April 2026). Every option on this list is faster than the copper it replaces — that is the honest headline, and it is why 5,000 rural households moved voluntarily last quarter. Full pricing and the Starlink tier question are here.

Check the broadband map for your address first. Fibre reaches about 87% of New Zealand premises and the footprint keeps moving. If it has reached you, take it — it beats everything else on this page on price, speed and latency, and installation has generally been free.

If not, ring a local WISP before you order anything. Nearly half of rural households leaving copper chose a local provider over Starlink, and they are buying support rather than making a mistake.

If neither, Starlink’s cheaper residential tier covers most households. The Commission measured 130 Mbps on it against 245 for Max — and 87% of those households could stream two UHD feeds at peak, against 93% on Max. Six points apart.

Do not wait for the notice. Six months sounds like plenty until you are arranging an install in a remote valley in winter. The households that moved early got to choose.