PSTN to go as Spark moves to IP network

Spark New Zealand announced plans to shift from PSTN to a fully digital telephone network. 

The company says upgrading to an IP-based network will take up to five years. At the end of the upgrade all telephone services including landline and mobile voice will be under the same digital umbrella with video and data communications. 

Spark says the move will give customers a better experience and help the company prepare for future converged services. However, some old technologies may not work with the new digital network.  

Mark Beder, Spark’s chief operating officer, says the upgrade has been planned for more than a decade. It is necessary because the existing network is nearing the end of its life and is becoming difficult to maintain.  

He says: "Maintaining the network is becoming harder and harder. Components are no longer manufactured. We've bought every second-hand part we can source from around the world and people with the skills to maintain the technology are harder to find."

PSTN is already on the way out. Last year the volume of non-PSTN voice traffic overtook PSTN for the first time. 

Although the switch is a huge job, Beder says customers will not see much evidence of it taking place. There will little disruption. 

"All the changes take place behind the scenes and disruption to customers has been minimal. The migration entails a small outage of a few minutes, scheduled during off-peak times for residential customers," he says.

To underline the point Spark says it has already consolidated and decommissioned 10 of the smaller, more remote exchanges in a trial. That’s small fraction of the 482 PSTN exchanges the company still operates. Another four exchanges will be decommissioned shortly.

Beder says the trial has been successful. “All the changes take place behind the scenes and disruption to customers has been minimal. The migration entails a small outage of a few minutes, scheduled during off-peak times for residential customers”, he says. 

Reaction to Commerce Commission Vodafone Sky ruling

Two months after rejecting a merger between Vodafone and Sky Television, the Commerce Commission released its reasoning. 

 In a 145-page report, the competition regulator explained it was concerned the merged business would own all the premium sports content. That’s no different from today; Sky holds rights to all the main codes. However, the reasoning goes on to explain that a merged Vodafone-Sky would be able to bundle these rights into packages in ways that would substantially reduce competition. 

Paul McBeth at BusinessDesk writes:

The regulator said it didn't need to reach a firm conclusion about which sports rights are premium, and that it was sufficient to recognise Sky holds the rights "to the majority of popular live sports content in New Zealand, for which there is no close substitute." 

At BusinessDay Tom Pullar-Strecker looks at what happens next. He says:

“…Sky TV and Vodafone had said they would wait for the detailed reasoning to be released before deciding on their next move, having previously lodged a High Court appeal against the commission's ruling in order to keep their options open.”

He goes on to report that competition lawyers have expressed doubt they are likely to find easy grounds for an appeal.

The title of Stuart Corner’s How the power of sports content killed the Voda-Sky merger at Computerworld New Zealand leaves little room for doubt about the decision. He writes:

In its full — heavily redacted — 145 page statement, released on 13 April it (the Commerce Commission) noted that the merged entity would control the rights to broadcast all New Zealand premium live sports content: rugby, cricket, NRL and netball until at least 2020.

 Furthermore, the commission considered it likely that the merged entity would continue to control the rights to this premium live sports content after they come up for renewal.

It also considered that the nexus between premium sport content and broadband and mobile services could only strengthen over time. “There is evidence suggesting that premium live sports content will increasingly be viewed over the internet in the future as broadband and mobile services and pay TV converge,” it said. 

Gartner forecasts slow growth for NZ communication services 

Research company Gartner says spending on communications services will reach NZ$4.43 billion in 2018 up 1.8 percent or $79 million from the NZ$4.36 billion spent in 2016. It defines communications services as including: consumer fixed services, consumer mobile services, enterprise fixed services and enterprise mobile services (both voice and data).

Gartner’s figure is part of the company’s worldwide spending IT forecast which breaks out separate numbers for industry sectors and countries including New Zealand. The total NZ IT spending forecast will reach NZ$11.8 billion in 2017. The fasted growing category in New Zealand over the period is software. 

While New Zealand’s 1.8 percent growth in communications services is low, it beats the global market which Gartner forecasts to climb only one percent over the same period. 

Briefs:

Spark Plugs into electric cars

 Spark is working with Wellington City Council partnering to extend the Spark Plug programme that adds electric vehicle charging to call boxes. The pair will add charges to phone boxes around the city over the coming months. 

The chargers will be free for anyone to use but will only supply a top-up charge. That’s enough to drive 20 to 40 kilometres. The charge takes around 30 minutes depending on the car. 

The installation costs are being shared 50:50 between Spark and Wellington City Council. Spark will cover operation costs while the council will look after car park maintenance. 

Wireless Spectrum

“So in the wireless space, spectrum is very, very expensive everywhere, regulators and governments are making money and they’re selling it off very piecemeal. And unfortunately, because it’s piecemeal, you get little bits of spectrum everywhere; you’ve got 20MHz here, 20MHz there or 16MHz here. And the more fragmented it gets, the less you can do with it. A lot of the chipsets can work very efficiently if you have what’s called contiguous spectrum, a continuous block – but unfortunately that’s not how it gets cut up.” 

 Steve Collins, CTO Netcomm Wireless speaking at CommsDay Summit 2017

Netflix hits 100 million customers

By the time you read this Netflix should have passed the 100 million subscriber mark. At the end of March the company had 98.7 million customers in around 190 countries. It added 5 million in the first three months of 2017, so by now is likely to have reached the milestone. Half of Netflix’ customers are in the US.