Broadband use surges, fixed wireless speed drops

Monitoring Report notes 37 percent increase in data use

There was a 37 percent increase in fixed broadband data use during the year to June 2020. The Commerce Commission's Annual Telecommunications Monitoring report notes the average New Zealand broadband chewed through 284 GB a month, up from 207 GB a year earlier.

The report says most broadband technologies held up well during a year where norms were upended by the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdowns.

Yet the Commerce Commission noted a significant performance decrease for fixed wireless broadband users. The average fixed wireless speed dropped 25 percent during the year.

This drop happened as the number of fixed wireless customers climbed 16 percent during the year. The number of fibre broadband users increased from a little over 800,000 to more than a million. By the time the report period closed around two-thirds of those who could connect to fibre had chosen the technology.

Traditional landline use declines

Traditional landline numbers dropped 12 percent during the year.

Retail telecommunications revenue dropped four percent during the year. Mobile revenue was down three percent. This was despite the growth and the importance of telecommunications at a time workers and students were sent home and asked to connect remotely.

Mobile data consumption continued to grow. It was up 20 percent during the year. The report notes the increased popularity of unlimited or 'endless' mobile data plans. These now account for 14 percent of on-account plans.

The Commerce Commission says New Zealand ranks number 12 in the OECD for average broadband download speed. It is well ahead of the OECD average and more than twice that of Australia, which is a laggard by international standards.

Rural tower upgrades gathers momentum

Crown Infrastructure Partners report that 39 new mobile towers were completed in the last three months of 2020. The towers are part of the RBI2 programme that aims to fill in holes in coverage.

The new towers deliver broadband to 4,405 rural homes. A further 21 towers that were part of the first phase of RBI were upgraded during the quarter. CIP says its wireless ISP partners gave improved broadband to 577 rural homes and businesses.

Cybersecurity spend increases

Businesses in New Zealand have increased their spending on cybersecurity by between 10 and 20 percent in the last year. A report from IDC says this comes as companies trim IT budgets.

IDC analyst Emily Lynch says investing in security is crucial as companies shift to new models of working. This includes more remote working and hybrid working. She goes on to say companies regard investment in security skills as essential as they position themselves for recovery and growth.

Spark Sport gets motorbike race streaming rights

Spark Sport is now the official New Zealand broadcaster of MotoGP, the motorcycle racing championship. It has the rights for the 2021 – 2023 seasons along with the Moto2 and Moto3 competitions.

The move to Spark Sport comes off the back of the sports streaming service securing and delivering their first New Zealand Grand Prix and Castrol Toyota Racing Series earlier this year, making it a go-to destination for Kiwi motorsport fans.

Head of Spark Sport, Jeff Latch says: “We’re very excited about our new partnership with MotoGP. Our ambition is to stream the world’s best sporting competitions and MotoGP definitely fits into that category.”

Vocus 2talk business service adds mobile plans

Vocus' 2talk unit has added bring-your-own-device mobile plans to its product portfolio. These plans will be sold alongside broadband and IP voice services both online and through 2talk's partner channel.

There are four plans with prices starting at $25. For that a user gets unlimited voice, text and data, but data has a maximum speed of 1Mbps. The top-of-the-line $50 plan is identical with the addition of 15GB of data at the 4G network speed, usually much higher than 1Mbps. There are also data-only plans.

Hegarty moves to N4L as chief people officer

Kim Hegarty is to fill the newly created role of chief people officer at Network for Learning. The organisation expects employee numbers expected to rise by 20 percent by the end of June as N4L takes on a great role managing school networks and opens a security operations centre.