2degrees reveals sovereign satellite strategy

In this edition:

• 2026 start date for 2degrees satellite-to-mobile service
• Sovereign satellites
• Chorus wants help closing the digital divide
• A big day on the Chorus network

Local ground station under construction as 2degrees firms AST Spacemobile plans

2degrees and AST SpaceMobile say they will offer a New Zealand
satellite-to-mobile next year, with a launch date pencilled in for mid-2026.

A key part of the project is the ground station 2degrees is currently building in the Manawatū town of Marton. It was chosen because of its clear sight lines in an area where there are no tall buildings. The company received resource consent to build the infrastructure last week.

AST has a dramatically different approach to SpaceX’s Starlink which is, at the time of writing, the only low Earth orbit satellite constellation offering services in New Zealand.

Fewer satellites with bigger footprint

Instead of SpaceX’s constellation of thousands of satellites, AST plans to operate a smaller network made up of dozens of larger satellites.

The company says between 45 and 60 are needed for worldwide coverage. Each is roughly the size of a tennis court, with 223 square metres of antenna surface area. AST has five satellites in orbit today and says there will be 40 next year.

The network is cellular first. While Starlink is essentially a broadband service offering bolt-on cellular features, AST says its constellation is designed from the ground up to provide cell towers in the sky.

AST satellites are "dumb radios”. This means all intelligence is in 2degrees' NZ-controlled equipment. This is another key difference: sovereignty, data never leaves New Zealand. All network operations are handled by an NZ-based team and traffic goes from satellites, through 2degrees’ ground station to the company’s core network.

The satellite ground station represents a significant capital investment for 2degrees. 2degrees chief marketing and strategy officer Zac Summers says this is an important aspect of the satellite project.

“We spoke to SpaceX and we admire what the company does, but we like the idea of controlling the infrastructure. We are ultimately an infrastructure company which means we’d rather put the capital on the ground here in New Zealand than run a large OPEX line.”

He points to recent comments by Telstra’s CFO (Michael Ackland) who talked about the huge amounts that company pays to SpaceX for something it does not control.

Unmodified handsets

Summers says the service works with unmodified mobile handsets. “We expect that 99.9 percent of the handsets we see on our network would work with the service, no adjustments are necessary”. Specifically, he says anything with 3GPP (a basic specification covering 4G and 5G) will work.

He says in testing engineers have demonstrated speeds of 20 Mbps, a second generation is coming soon that will offer 120 Mbps. It promises to deliver a full cellular service including voice calls, 4G, 5G and video calling. Handover between satellites and terrestrial towers is seamless, customers moving around will not notice if they switch.

When it arrives the service will also offer network slicing, QoS prioritisation and, where required, can deliver private 5G networks.

Formats and tiers

Summers says 2degrees is still working through how the service will be offered to customers. “We will put it out there in different formats and tiers. There's going to be a small number of people for whom this is incredibly valuable and a large number of people for whom it is useful, but not necessarily valuable.”

There will be options for key industry and government markets and the ability to step in should a natural disaster disrupt terrestrial services. 2degrees has already see strong early interest from enterprise and business customers especially in areas such as mining and for customers who employ remote lone workers.

He says there will probably be a need to manage demand. 2degrees is looking at data caps, bandwidth constraints and QoS prioritisation or a combination of these. If there is an emergency, the company will probably dial down capacity to concentrate on voice and basic messaging over streaming. There’s also a need to prevent background app updates on devices from consuming capacity meant for emergency use.

AST SpaceMobile to develop European sovereign satellite constellation

AST SpaceMobile and Vodafone are planning a European satellite constellation that will provide satellite-to-phone services for government and commercial users. The project will be managed by a joint venture between the two companies.

The network is due to be operational next year and will complement terrestrial networks.

A key part of the project is what the joint venture partners describe as a comprehensive command switch to support European oversight and security. This includes encryption keys and the ability to manage the activation, deactivation and direction of satellite beams in Europe.

What is a sovereign satellite?
When a nation or, in Europe’s case, a close knit group of nations, has full control over satellite infrastructure. This gives them oversight and security over communications without external interference.

Chorus charts path to all-fibre future, renews calls for government partnership

Chorus renewed its call for greater public-private investment to close the digital divide at a company event in Wellington this week. The company urged government to “show bold vision again” as it did with the original ultra-fast broadband initiative.

Chair Mark Cross says fibre has already added $31 billion to the economy and supports $9 billion in annual GDP, but 400,000 households still lack meaningful access. The company’s fibre network and the networks of the three other fibre companies; Northpower, Enable and Tuatahi, now reach 87 percent of the population

Chief executive Mark Aue says Chorus is now shooting for 80 percent fibre uptake and will retire the legacy copper network by decade’s end. Maybe sooner.

He highlighted community co-funded builds and digital equity pilots bringing affordable connections to low-income families.

Deputy Prime Minister David Seymour praised Chorus’s role in building world-class infrastructure, comparing New Zealand’s broadband favourably with global peers, and confirmed a telecommunications regulatory review to simplify outdated rules. While the work on the review is now complete, Seymour told Download Weekly the results are now before cabinet and most likely will be made public early next year.

Sunday saw the biggest day yet on the Chorus network

Kurt Rodgers, Chorus network strategy manager, says last Sunday was the biggest ever data usage day on the company’s network. Customers collectively downloaded a total of 31 petabytes in 24 hours.

Epic Games began preloading console versions of a new Simpsons season of Fortnite from 2am local time. This is a new approach from Epic, it means the software downloads while networks are relatively quiet and gamers can get started quickly. Fortnite has a history of breaking network records.

Then at 9am the All Blacks - Ireland Rugby test began streaming from Chicago. Rodgers says this caused the largest ever morning peak on the network.

In other news...

• Rocket Labs faces problems, but shareholders seem happy — NZ Herald
• The tablet market is in poor shape — The Register
• Few surprises at Spark’s 2025 AGM — The NZ Herald
• Satellites are in the front line — Newsroom
• We don’t really know what went wrong with MethaneSat — Space News

Tait Communications joins 450 MHz Alliance

Christchurch-based Tait Communications has joined the 450 MHz Alliance. It’s an international association that represents stakeholders operating in the 380-470 MHz spectrum band. Members include major companies like Ericsson, Nokia and Qualcomm.

450 MHz is the part of the spectrum where signals travel easily through walls and other solid structures. It is ideal for wide area coverage and penetrates indoors or underground and popular with private networks or anyone needing wide-area and secure communications.

This sits well with Tait, which specialises in critical communications systems. The company designs and manufactures professional mobile radio (PMR) and land mobile radio (LMR) systems, the types of mission-critical communication networks that benefit most from 450 MHz spectrum characteristics.

Rod Drury behind start-up aiming to build Slack competitor

Xero founder Rod Drury is working on a start-up that intends to upend the messaging sector tackling the specific issues that concern governments and corporations.

Corro is the trans-Tasman start-up planning to take-on Slack and Microsoft Teams. It is led by co-founder Sara Goldsworthy who is a former AWS and national security executive.

The premise behind Corro is that while many government and corporate employees using messaging systems, much of the knowledge shared in these systems is lost because users are unable to search and recover messages. It also recognises the need for greater security.

Apple looking to build on iPhone satellite capability

A report at Bloomberg (behind a paywall) says Apple is planning to add further satellite communications features to future iPhones. This comes at a time when there is talk the company’s satellite partner, Globalstar, may be sold to SpaceX.

At present iPhones support satellite emergency messaging and location sharing. Features potentially in the pipeline include support for Apple Maps when users are outside normal cell coverage and the ability to send photos.

A year has passed since One NZ faced criminal action over its 100% claim

The Commerce Commission filed criminal charges against One NZ for claims it made in the previous year’s marketing campaign promoting “100% mobile coverage”.

This time five years ago Sky was looking at an improved financial outlook on the back of strong performance from its streaming TV portfolio.

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