A century for the Rural Connectivity Group

Bill Bennett -

Gebbies Valley is the site of the Rural Connectivity Group latest mobile broadband tower.

I had to look the place up on a map before writing this story. That’s kind of the point.

The RCG’s job is to fill broadband and mobile voice coverage gaps. A government subsidy helps. The Rural Connectivity Group is a joint venture between New Zealand’s three mobile carriers: Spark, Vodafone and 2degrees.

It runs as an open access network. Some of the money funding comes from the Telecommunications Development Levy.  The Provincial Growth Fund also contributes. Spark, Vodafone and 2degrees invested $75 million in the project.

Today there are 100 working rural broadband towers.

Fixed wireless broadband

Each tower offers 4G fixed wireless broadband and 4G voice calling to the local community. To keep costs low, Spark, Vodafone and 2degrees share the antennae. The towers have fibre backhaul, which improves the performance.

Gebbies Valley has Voice-over-LTE equipment which means users can make high quality voice calls. There will also be 3G voice calling, that’s not commissioned yet. This will cover a black spot on State Highway 75.

A media statement from Communications Minister Kris Faafoi says it is a significant milestone for the second phase of the Rural Broadband Initiative. This a government funded project to deliver broadband services to the more remote parts of New Zealand.

Extra coverage

Faafoi says the RCG towers now provide broadband access to 8,121 homes and businesses. They also mean extra mobile coverage for 343km of state highway and connect 23 tourism locations.

Eventually RBI2 will cater for 84,000 rural homes and businesses. It will improve mobile coverage on 1400km of state highways and connect 168 tourist sites.

While the project is planned to officially finish in 2023, there’s a somewhat open-ended nature to RBI2.

Early on in the programme, the government asked the Rural Connectivity Group to build as many towers as possible with the allocated pool of money. Since then the government tipped in more funds. There’s no reason to think it will all stop at the formal end of the project.