The company owns the majority of telephone lines and exchange equipment in New Zealand; and was responsible for building approximately 70% of the country's fibre-optic UFB network, receiving a government subsidy of $929 million to do so.

[1] The company was split from Telecom New Zealand in 2011, as a condition of winning the majority of the contracts for the Government's Ultra-Fast Broadband Initiative.

Contrary to the standard overseas practice of providing full-speed Fibre, Chorus plans differ in the amount of data and speed allocated.

[8][9] In April 2013, Chorus signed contracts with Visionstream[10] and Downer worth NZ$1 billion to build its part of New Zealand's ultra-fast broadband network, after receiving a government subsidy of $929 million.

Telecom retained the relationship with retail customers, the POTS telephone exchange equipment, some fibre back-haul, the shares in Southern Cross cable and the XT mobile network.