Wholesale telcos oppose mobile termination deregulation

In this edition:

— MTAS deregulation dissent
— NZ Compare awards
— Malware warning
— NZ - Korea quantum communications

Three small telcos want the Commerce Commission to rethink its plan to deregulate mobile termination access services (MTAS). They line up against two of the biggest network operators, One NZ and Spark, which support deregulation.

Last month, the Commerce Commission published a draft recommendation on Mobile Termination Access Service regulation concluding that “intervention may no longer be necessary”.

MTAS regulation shaped today’s mobile market. It was introduced in September 2010 and covers mobile to mobile and fixed-line to mobile voice call regulation along with terminating SMS messages between mobile networks.

Competition needed regulation

At the time, 2degrees was struggling to win market share. Telecom and Vodafone would aggressively discount calls on their own networks and penalise calls moving between networks. In effect, this diminished competition.

After regulation, on-net traffic dropped from 86% in 2008/09 to 57% by 2023/24. This paved the way for 2degrees to compete effectively with the incumbents. Traffic between the three players became almost symmetric.

It took time, but ultimately it pushed down mobile phone costs.

In its submission, One NZ argues that the conditions that led to MTAS regulation in 2010 have fundamentally changed. Spark agrees and says 2degrees is now established and the market has moved on so that data is more important than voice calls or SMS.

These arguments in favour of deregulation are sound if we only consider the competitive playing field between the three mobile network operators.

Smaller telcos have a different view

Yet that is not the only consideration: Pivotel, Symbio and Virtutel all made submissions arguing against deregulation from their perspective as wholesale and specialist non-MNO service providers.

Symbio says there is an incorrect assumption behind the draft decision that “generalises a condition unique to MNO-to-MNO relationships, not the broader communications ecosystem.”

The business is a wholesale provider. It says: “Wholesalers remain exposed to exactly the same termination bottleneck that justified regulation in 2010 and continued regulation in 2015 and 2020”.

Wholesale bottleneck

Pivotel makes a similar argument that MTAS “remains a wholesale bottleneck service with no effective substitute”. It says there is evidence that MNOs exhibit monopolistic and anti-competitive behaviour in the absence of regulation.

The company is a mobile satellite telecommunication provider and says the Commerce Commission has focused on the peer-to-peer voice and SMS while ignoring the impact on application-to-person (A2P) and satellite calling.

Virtutel, which describes itself as a specialised wholesale ISP of data and voice services, echoed the view of its peers. It says the draft report did not explore the effect of deregulation on wholesale-only transit providers, fixed-line operators that rely on fixed-to-mobile termination, OTT/small MVNOs and A2P messaging providers.

When the draft was published, the Commerce Commission noted some of the small telco concerns are outside the scope of the MTAS investigation and said it planned a separate Commerce Act enquiry into A2P SMS.

The Commerce Commission has called for cross-submissions to be filed by December 23 and says it plans to send a final report to the minister, Paul Goldsmith, by March 2026.

Power company Nova Energy lights up NZ Compare awards

The big story of the 2025 NZ Compare Awards was Nova Energy which won two awards in the mobile category as well as topping broadband and power awards. The company won Best Customer Support in broadband and mobile, was the People’s Choice winner in mobile and in power. Last year Nova Energy was criticised by the Telecommunications Commissioner for using GST-exclusive pricing.

Sky Broadband took the prizes for both Best Fibre Broadband Provider and Best Bundled Plan. Voyager also won two broadband categories: Best Business Broadband Provider and the People’s Choice Award. Lightwire came out top in the Best Rural Service Provider category while 360Net was named the Best Value Broadband Provider.

Rocket Mobile won the Best Value Mobile Provider award while Nova Energy took the gongs for the People's Choice Award and the Best Customer Support.

Tuanz took the 2025 NZ Compare Supreme Award for its Te Ara Hihiko equity and inclusion initiative. The award is for organisations making a real and lasting social impact. Judges say the initiative made an outstanding contribution to digital equity for Māori and Pasifika across Aotearoa.

Spook cyber agency warns of malware infection

The GCSB’s National Cyber Security Centre emailed 26,000 New Zealanders this week after the Lumma Stealer malware attack. Recipients were directed to the agency’s website for advice on removing the malware.

Lumma Stealer affects devices running Microsoft Windows and aims to steal sensitive data including email addresses and passwords. These are then used for identity theft.

Michael Jagusch, chief operating officer, says this is the first time the NCSC has conducted such a large scale communication: “We want to assure recipients that the email from the NCSC is legitimate.”

In other news...

• New Zealand nudges towards under 16 social media ban — The Post.
• Satellite ground stations for military — RNZ.
• AI role in precision dairying — Farmers Weekly.
• The internet is not getting any better, but we can fix that — The Conversation.

Quantum communications behind NZ-Korea entanglement

New Zealand is working with the Republic of Korea on three quantum communications projects. The projects aim to make online banking safe, secure health data and protect against cyber threats. The NZ end of the programme has been run by the Dodd-Walls Centre for Photonic and Quantum Technologies on behalf of MBIE.

Dodd-Walls Director Frédérique Vanholsbeeck says quantum communications faces challenges encoding light particles or photons with quantum information, then sending them over long distances while retaining their quantum properties allowing quantum systems to talk to each other.

The partnership with Korea aims to overcome some of these challenges and lay the foundation for next-generation quantum communication networks.

Vanholsbeeck says New Zealand brings its expertise in quantum technologies and photonics to the partnership while Korea is contributing its world-class engineering.

Devoli in Deloitte NZ Masters of Growth for five years in a row

Comms technology wholesaler Devoli is the first company to spend five consecutive years in Deloitte’s Masters of Growth Index. The index is for companies that have made it from startup stage and shown sustained significant growth. The business has grown 478% over the last five years.

Devoli CEO Karl Rosnell says his company’s: “...connectivity platform is designed to support fast, efficient growth for our partners, so our success is inseparable from theirs. This achievement belongs to them as much as it does to us.”

NBN’s Ken Wallis joins Chorus as executive general manager access

A Linkedin post from Ken Wallis says the former NBN Australia executive general manager, products and pricing, has started working at Chorus as the executive general manager access.