This is Bill Bennett’s technology and telecommunications news, opinion and analysis site. It examines the subject from a New Zealand perspective and includes a weekly newsletter published every Friday.

Low earth orbit satellites are making waves in rural New Zealand. In its 2024 Telecommunications Monitoring Report the Commerce Commission focused on the gaps remaining between rural and urban parts of the nation. While rural users continue to pay more and get less back, the arrival of SpaceX’s Starlink has reset competition in these areas.

ComCom passes on fibre deregulation; for now. Telecommunications Commissioner, Tristan Gilbertson is reluctant for the Commerce Commission telecoms team to investigate fibre deregulation at this time.. He says we are just three years into the new regulatory regime and there is “not enough competitive constraint on fibre for there to be any serious question of deregulation at this time”.

The Download Weekly is published every Friday. It’s a free, readable, independent email newsletter wrap of New Zealand telecommunications news and analysis.

2022年6月10日 · Aotearoa’s Digital Priorities in 2022, a report from Tuanz, sponsored and promoted by Vodafone, suggests New Zealand is at a “tipping point” and “slipping behind the world on key measures of digital economic performance”. The report pulls on data from the Portulans Institute Network Readiness Index which benchmarks and ranks nations on a range of technology measures.

One NZ’s Starlink coverage moves closer as testing beckons. One New Zealand says it is about to start testing its satellite to mobile service that will give customers connectivity in areas not currently served by its tower network.. The carrier says Starlink parent company SpaceX has obtained the permission to start testing.

2019年11月28日 · Last week engineers completed the first UFB stage. The UFB1 fibre network reaches three quarters of New Zealand. UFB2 will stretch that to around 87 per cent.

Freelance journalist: New Zealand Herald, RNZ National, NZBusiness. Available for writing jobs.

Low Earth orbit satellites, 5G and a fibre speed bump are set to reboot New Zealand broadband competition.. It’s a decade since the first customers connected to Ultrafast broadband. At that time fibre looked the likely Kiwi broadband future.

Looked at from one perspective Starlink could be the missing piece of NZ’s rural broadband jigsaw puzzle, but the picture is more complex.