Dense Air has purchased New Zealand spectrum from Blue Reach

London-based Dense Air has purchased New Zealand spectrum from Blue Reach and Cayman Wireless.

The company intends to set up a wholesale small cell mobile network. Dense Air says it will not compete direct with existing mobile carriers. It says it can begin operation “almost immediately”.

Dense Air now has rights to 70 MHz of spectrum in the 2.5GHz band. Of this, it acquired 30 MHz from Blue Reach, owned by former CallPlus owner Malcolm Dick. Dick planned a similar wholesale cellular operation using his Blue Reach brand. The rest comes from Cayman Wireless which is a part of Craig Wireless, a Canadian company.

Dense Air paid 13 times the original price

The New Zealand Herald reports Dense Air paid a total of almost $26 million for the spectrum. That is about 13 times the amount the owners paid for the spectrum in 2007.

There are implications for prices when the government decides to auction 5G spectrum. That’s due some time in the next 18 months or so. If Dense Air enters the auction it could push up prices. This could be a problem for 2degrees and Vodafone.

Dense Air is unknown in New Zealand. The company began operation in February of this year and is a division of US-based Airspan.

New class of wholesale network

The company says it is a new class of wholesale network operator. It aims to “enhance and extend” coverage and capacity for existing mobile carriers and says it will run as a “carrier of carriers”.

In practice this means Dense Air will build and run a series of 4G and 5G small cell sites. The aim is to compliment existing networks. It says that in most cases these will extend existing networks in places that need denser coverage. This might be places such as shopping malls, office parks, campuses or sports stadiums. Dense Air says its small cell approach can dramatically improve performance and capacity.

That said, Dense Air has more than enough spectrum to compete with all three carriers in New Zealand. Should it choose to do so, it has the capability to offer MVNO (mobile virtual network operator) services. This could be of interest to telcos such as Vocus or MyRepublic. Both wish to offer mobile services but own neither spectrum nor their own cellular networks.

Spark pushes government on 5G spectrum auction

Spark used this week’s launch of its Auckland-based 5G test lab to pressure government to speed up the 5G spectrum auction. The company wants to have a network in place in time for the 2021 America’s Cup.

Because of the preparations, that means going live by July 2020. Spark plans to use 5G technology as it works with Team New Zealand to defend the cup. To meet those deadlines, the spectrum auction needs to take place inside the next 18 months. Spark would prefer an early auction. The rest of the industry, that’s Vodafone and 2degrees, are not in a hurry.

Trustpower adds cellular with Spark MVNO deal

Trustpower will offer wireless broadband and mobile services on the Spark network.

The companies have an MVNO agreement which will see the electricity retailer add cellular services to its bundled offerings. Trustpower GM Markets Craig Neustroski says: ”Mobile is increasingly important to our customers, and the ability to offer it as part of our household services bundle is exciting.”

Wireless is an important missing link for Trustpower which has a sizeable provincial and rural customer base. Many of these will not have fibre access for some time, so wireless gives them an alternative. Trustpower says it added 9000 new broadband customers in the last year.

111 upgrade

Thanks to an upgrade, the GPS technology used to track the location of 111 emergency callers now covers 95 percent of calls. In the past only modern smartphones could use it. Communications Minister Kris Faafoi says the upgrade could save lives. Datacom built and designed the Location Area Service system used to find callers.

TradeMe in play

TradeMe says Apax Partners, a British private equity firm has make a non-binding offer which values the online auction site at around $2.5 billion. That’s about 20 percent more than the company’s market value before the offer. The terms of the offer give Apax exclusive due diligence access until December 12, but other investors are free to offer rival bids.