ComCom report charts Starlink impact

Monitoring Report throws spotlight on LEO satellites and rural broadband

The Commerce Commission says New Zealand’s widespread adoption of low earth orbit satellites in country areas has reset rural broadband competition.

Much of the focus of the ComCom’s 2024 Telecommunications Monitoring Report is on the many gaps that remain between urban and rural telecommunications. In general rural users continue to pay more and receive less, however the situation continues to improve thanks to the arrival of SpaceX’s Starlink.

To help customers navigate the growing number of options, the ComCom has released an interactive map. It goes into a high degree of detail showing the network options at individual properties around the nation.

Elsewhere the report covers the efforts made by retail and wholesale telcos to move customers who are still on copper-based services to new technologies. It also looks at the encouraging, albeit faint, signs of an emerging wholesale mobile market and the impact of companies selling electricity-telecoms bundles.

Rural New Zealand embraces LEO

The ComCom says LEO satellite broadband now accounts for 14 percent of rural connections. In the last year the number of connections has climbed from 12,000 to over 34,000.

New Zealand currently has the highest number of satellite connections per person in the OECD. (We are also fourth highest per capita for fixed wireless broadband connections.)

This has had a knock on effect elsewhere in rural broadband. Most noticeably the regional wireless internet service providers (Wisps) have responded to satellite competition with price cuts, increasing data caps or by boosting speeds.

Some of these rural service providers have moved up the food chain rolling out fibre services to rural communities.

More LEOs to come

For now, Starlink is the only LEO satellite option. Yet as Telecommunications Commissioner, Tristan Gilbertson points out in his commentary: “We’re expecting new entrants in this space next year – including Amazon – which is likely to further intensify competitive dynamics.

“Starlink is already trying to get ahead of this by offering a ‘deprioritised’ service that, so far, seems to deliver speeds close to its standard service for a lower price.”

Gilbertson says: “Starlink is delivering speeds three times faster than other rural alternatives and consumers are voting with their feet – making Starlink the fastest growing rural broadband provider.”

Price comparisons

New Zealand’s relatively high prices for some key telecommunications compared with other OECD nations has been a continuing theme in the Commerce Commission’s monitoring reports over the years.

The majority of New Zealanders get a good deal. Our prices for the fibre and fixed wireless broadband available in urban areas are in line with, or lower than, OECD averages. However, while copper is on the way out, the mainly rural people who continue to rely on the technology pay $28 a month more than the OECD average.

Prices for New Zealand’s pre-paid mobile customers are in line with those in other OECD countries, but our post-paid mobile customers pay $15 more per month than average OECD prices.

The gap between our post-paid mobile prices and the overseas benchmark has climbed in the last year which suggests competition between the three carriers may not be at the same intensity as in recent years. This could be an unforeseen (by the regulator) consequence of the 2degrees merger.

2degrees shines in Opensignal experience report

Analyst company OpenSignal ranked 2degrees in first for all six of the broadband experience categories it measured in its first New Zealand report.

2degrees was the outright winner in four categories and shared the top spot with One New Zealand in the other two categories.

New Zealand’s three main carriers, Spark, 2degrees, One NZ came out ahead of SpaceX’s Starlink low earth orbit satellite broadband service in every category.

Opensignal says its rankings are based on real-world data collected from Spark, 2degrees, One NZ and Starlink customers.

Rural gap

In a separate research project Opensignal looked at rural-urban gaps for a number of countries. It brings some perspective to New Zealand’s rural broadband debate.

OpenSignal’s Broadband Reliability Experience gap for New Zealand is 16 percent, which puts it at the lower end of rural-urban gaps in the analysed samples. The gap widens from 8 percent and 9 percent for Norway and Sweden respectively to 46 percent in the Philippines or 62 percent in Colombia.

Commentary: Experience report

OpenSignal says its rankings and data help understand how people experience telecommunications services in their everyday lives.

It’s a useful perspective and the focus on how ordinary people consume telecommunications can help keep the industry grounded when there is a temptation to concentrate on the most demanding customers.

That said, the data isn’t useful for making performance comparisons between telcos. That’s because OpenSignal aggregates data across all technologies: DSL, fibre, fixed wireless and satellite.

This means a service provider with a greater proportion of customers on Fibre Max plans would outperform a service provider supporting a larger number of DSL or 4G fixed wireless broadband customers.

It’s quite possible that 2degrees topped all the categories because it has more higher-end customers when compared with Spark and One NZ who may still carry the burden of many slow copper connections.

Opensignal says it didn’t include fibre-only service providers such as Mercury, Sky Broadband or Contact Energy in the survey because their market share is small. Had they been included, it’s likely they would have outperformed the larger telcos because of their favourable product mix.

One New Zealand names fibre wholesale business

One New Zealand is getting closer to launching a fibre business aimed at wholesale customers and data centre operators. It says the business will launch later this year as EonFibre.

Jason Paris, One New Zealand CEO, says the fibre operation will have “increased independence” from the company’s retail business.

One NZ has 11,000 km of fibre. There is a core backbone network and a series of metro fibre rings which the company says can connect to all leading data centres. EonFibre will offer international connections using the Tasman Global Access, Hawaiki and Southern Cross networks along with the domestic Aqualink fibre.

EonFibre will be led by general manager Richard Mooney who is the incoming General Manager of EonFibre. He sets out the company’s ambition: “Once operational, we want EonFibre to be NZ’s leading fibre provider for the technology and wholesale business sector. EonFibre will operate and sell services via wholesale arrangements to other businesses including hyperscalers.”

Lynk powers Kiribati Sat2Phone service

Vodafone Kiribati has launched a satellite direct to mobile phone service in the Pacific island state. The carrier is using Lynk Global, a low earth orbit satellite operator. From day one the service will offer coverage to subscribers in Kiritimati (formerly known as Christmas Island).

The carrier says this is just the start of the project and that eventually it will extend 21st century connectivity to all corners of Kiribati which is spread over an area of 3,441,810 km2.

Vodafone Kiribati describes Lynk as a “must-have service that not only enhances communication but also has the potential to save lives”.

Lynk Global has New Zealand partnerships with 2degrees and Spark. Last year 2degrees worked with Lynk to become the first telco to trial calling between standard mobile handsets and low earth orbit satellites. Spark signed a deal with Lynk Global to trial direct-to-phone services in June last year.

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