Download Week: Spark presses go on 5G

Roll out starts at Palmerston North

Spark says Palmerston North city centre will be the company's first full 5G site. It will offer mobile and fixed wireless services there. 

The company says it will add four more 5G locations by the end of the year. 

Jolie Hodson, Spark's CEO, says this is a major milestone in what will be a long-term and significant investment in 5G infrastructure across the country.

Spark's small scale launch comes eight months after Vodafone launched 5G with 100 towers operational on day one. Vodafone offers 5G in parts of Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Queenstown.

5G at no extra cost

For now the 5G network will be available to suitably equipped Spark customers at no extra cost. The company says this offer will remain in place until next July. 

This is not Spark's first foray into 5G. The carrier offers a 5G fixed wireless broadband service in a handful of small South Island towns. Spark says its Palmerston North site is the first to offer both 5G mobile and fixed wireless. 

Spark had to wait for available spectrum before launching its 5G network. Vodafone already had suitable spectrum. The government spectrum auction was due to take place in March. That was cancelled because of the pandemic. Instead the government allocated temporary spectrum to carriers.  

Commerce Commission fines MyRepublic for TDL breach

The Commerce Commission fined MyRepublic $2000 for 

failing to come up with the information needed to calculate its share of the Telecommunications Development Levy (TDL). It missed the due date and despite follow-ups went for months without delivering. 

In 2018 the Commerce Commission issued MyRepublic with a written warning for the same breach. Telecommunications commissioner Tristan Gilbertson says if MyRepublic fails to comply in future it could face a penalty of up to $300,000.

Vodafone upgrades mobile towers to meet data demand

Vodafone says it has upgraded 124 cell sites in the first six months of 2020. The company says it moved to meet increased data demand: traffic is increasing at 40 percent year on year. In most case sites were upgraded from 4G to 4.5G.

Progress on Southern Cross Next cable 

The US Federal Communications Commission has given  Southern Cross Cable Network the green light to build a Californian landing station for its Next extension. The cable will land at Hermosa Beach in Los Angeles. Landing facilities are already in place at Coogee Beach in Sydney and Takapuna Beach in Auckland.

Fonterra becomes Microsoft's first big NZ datacentre client 

Dairy giant Fonterra has signed a five year partnership deal with Microsoft making it the first big user of the company's New Zealand Azure datacentre region. The pair say moving from on-site datacenters to Microsoft cloud services will increase the amount of data Fonterra can process. It will include on-farm Internet of Things sensors. 

Mahan takes over at Spark's Telegistics unit

Victoria Mahan is the new CEO of Spark's Telegistics subsidiary. She was previously at HP where she has worked as commercial and enterprise sales manager, chief financial officer and category marketing manager. Telegistics is Spark's technology distribution business, it sells products from Nokia and Cisco among others.  

Sponsored data partnership lowers Covid mobile charges

Spark, Vodafone and 2degrees have cut a deal with the Ministry of Health that will cut mobile charges for accessing officially sanctioned Covid-19 information. The agreement covers 11 health websites and two general practitioner portals. Until June 2021 the data for accessing this information will be charged back to the ministry. After that date there will be reviews to consider extending the scheme.