At the end of September, fibre companies had 880,000 premises connected to their networks. There were 581,000 copper
connections. Fibre connections were up 31 percent on the year earlier. Copper connections were down 23 percent.
These numbers come from the Commerce Commission’s Annual Telecommunications Monitoring Report. Last year fibre
officially overtook copper as New Zealand’s connection technology.
This happened a couple of months before the first phase of New Zealand’s UFB fibre build was completed. When the project started a decade earlier the plan was to have 20 percent of connections. The planners thought fibre
overtaking copper would happen sometime in the distant future.
Fixed wireless broadband
Fixed wireless broadband is also up. It climbed 14 percent in the year to September 2019 to reach a total of 188,000
connections. What the Commerce Commission does not reveal is that Spark back-pedalled on fixed wireless sales in the run up to the Rugby World Cup. Without that, the growth would have been higher.
Telecommunications Commissioner Dr Stephen Gale says; “New Zealanders are increasingly moving to the fibre broadband
network. This trend is set to continue with nearly three-quarters of a million homes and businesses yet to switch in
areas where fibre is available to be connected”.
There’s a curious section in the media statement about broadband prices. Gale says; “…Prices for a medium use
fixed-broadband plan (150GB/30Mbps) and voice bundle have remained at $75 in 2019. As the OECD average price has dropped
since last year, New Zealand is now more expensive than the international average.”
Well yes, but the plan in question is a strange one to choose. Few New Zealand customers have 30Mbps plans and the most
popular plans have unlimited data. You can buy an uncapped gigabit fibre plan for $85 a month. I’ve no international
comparative data to quote, but this is lower than the average price around the world.
Competitive mobile plans
Elsewhere in the report the Commerce Commission notes New Zealand’s mobile plans remain competitive by international
standards.
Gale says; “New Zealand’s mobile plan prices are below the OECD average for all plan types we measure. For instance, a
medium use plan of 100 calls and 2GB of data costs $28, 24 percent below the international average”.
The Commerce Commission also looks at telco market share. It notes smaller companies are growing their share of fixed
broadband at the expense of the big names.
“Increased competition in the market is good for consumers. In the past year we’ve seen encouraging signs with small
retailers like MyRepublic and Stuff Fibre growing their market shares. Overall, smaller retailers’ market share grew
from 8 percent to 11 percent in 2019, with customers largely being wooed over from Spark and Vodafone.”
It’s official: Fibre overtakes copper was first posted at billbennett.co.nz.