Upbeat Telecommunications Forum annual report contrasts with wider business mood

The New Zealand Telecommunications Forum’s annual report shows an industry in transition and confident at a time the nation's business sector faces huge pressure.

That’s not new for the sector, transition has become a way of life in telecoms. Yet there is more happening now than in the past, as the switch from copper networks winds down and mobile carriers prepare to repurpose 3G spectrum for 5G networks.

As TCF CEO Paul Brislen notes in his introduction to the report, with close to nine in ten homes now able to connect to fibre and most people having done so, copper is at the end of its useful life. There are now only 40,000 remaining copper landlines.

That transition is nearing its final stages. Meanwhile, mobile carriers are preparing to close 3G networks as the market shifts to 5G.

Other matters in Brislen’s focus include moves to modernise infrastructure and meet the challenges of resilience. He also talks of the industry’s commitment to sustainability and consumer protection.

There is a reminder in Brislen’s introduction that telecommunications is a key part of the nation’s infrastructure. He says: “In the year ahead we look forward to working with the new government on its National Infrastructure Plan and to telecommunications taking its place as a key enabler of economic growth for New Zealand.”

2degrees wins Network for Learning contract from Spark

2degrees and Palo Alto Networks have won a long-term contract to deliver the next generation of managed network services to Network for Learning (N4L). The partners replace Spark which previously held the contract.

The contract is the result of a competitive process that started a year ago in September 2023. It included an independent probity auditor and, as with most matters concerning N4L included Ministry of Education input.

Under the new arrangement, Palo Alto will take charge of security providing on-premise firewalls along with cybersecurity and web filtering services. N4L will effectively operate as a virtual ISP using internet services provided by 2degrees.

It’s a sizeable contract, N4L’s network covers the majority of state and state-integrated schools in New Zealand, around 2,500 in total.

The new contract will see N4L take full ownership and management of the Managed Network. It says will be more cost efficient and give the organisation greater flexibility.

Schools will start moving to the new service in March 2025. The process should finish by the following May. N4L will use private contractors for onsite support with the transition fully funded for state and state-integrated schools by the Ministry of Education.

Datacom: Two-thirds of NZ firms using AI

Datacom says two-thirds of New Zealand companies now use AI in one form or another. That’s up from just under half of all companies (48 percent) a year ago.

There has been a complementary shift in attitudes towards AI with 70 percent telling researchers it is “exciting, I support it”. A year ago that sentiment applied to only half the respondents. A similar number, 71 percent, think AI will drive economic advantages and new revenue opportunities.

Datacom released these figures in its “State of AI Index, AI Attitudes” report.

Elsewhere the report finds two-thirds of New Zealand companies don't have a formal strategy for cloud and AI technologies even through two thirds of business computing workloads are now in the cloud.

No consensus from PC market analysts

Analysts disagree on PC market performance. IDC says shipments have dipped slightly. Gartner also saw a decline while Canalys says the market has grown year on year for the fourth consecutive quarter.

For IDC the market dropped 2.4 percent year-on-year. Gartner says it is down 1.3 percent. Canalys thinks the market was up 1.3 percent.

The three don’t even agree about which PC brands are doing best. All of them put Lenovo in first place followed by HP in second and Dell in third place. After that it gets messy. Canalys has Asus at number four while Gartner thinks Apple is fourth. IDC has the two in a tie for the position.

They can’t all be right and it’s possible they are not all measuring the same things. This is not clear from the press releases. What we can conclude from reading the three reports is the market is more or less flat.

In other news...

Never forget that someone has to pay for the billions of dollars in tech mergers
At interest.co.nz Juha Saarinen points out that someone has to pay when technology giants merge. In this case AT&T faces a 1000 percent plus rise in the cost of the virtual machines it rents from Broadcom following the company’s merger with VMware..

Google Cloud appoints Paul Migliorini to lead ANZ
As is often the case with tech giants, New Zealand is very much an afterthought as Julia Taleveski writes:

Based in Sydney, Migliorini will spearhead the local go-to-market strategy and work closely with customers and partners such as ANZ Bank, Bendigo and Adelaide Bank, Macquarie Bank, Australian Pharmaceutical Industries, Woolworth, Ramsay Heath Care, Optus, Telstra, Department of Health and Aged Care, CSIRO, Canva, Culture Amp and Pet Circle.

Basis: The most successful Kiwi startup you’ve never heard of
The NZ Herald’s Chris Keall talks to the founders of an interesting start-up:

A money man and a power man joined forces to create Basis - which raised $38 million to fund a new type of switchboard for homes that could shave up to $1000 per year from electricity bills. It won’t launch until the new year, but they’ve already sold 5300 units.

Workers called back to the office as Census data shows a growing WFH preference
The world fast-forwarded into a fibre, 5G-enabled future when the pandemic sent everyone home to work or study. But as Katie Kenny explains for RNZ, the pressure is on to return to offices for more of the time if not necessarily all of the time.

Research is mixed on whether remote work boosts productivity and wellbeing. But plenty of it suggests hybrid policies pan out well for employers and employees.

“The controversies and disagreements surrounding the productivity effects of work from home reflect the complex nature of the issue," as one overview put it. "There is no sound reason to expect the productivity effects of remote work to be uniform across jobs, workers, managers, and organisations."