Building data centres in the country isn't a walk in the park though. Compared to Australia, we have a cooler climate and mostly renewable energy, both of which are large pluses for operators. Labour here is cheaper apparently, if you can find qualified people.
Political stability and ease and transparency of doing business are other positives for NZ, but selecting a site for a new data centre is rather complicated though I'm told. First, it should ideally be in a zone that isn't quake prone, nor can it be in a area at risk of flooding from tsunamis.
Second, the data centre needs reliable power through two or more substations. Auckland apparently uses heaps of power which means having to contend with brownouts or sagging voltages for facilities in or past north of the city.
You can't be too far from Auckland however, as that's the country's internetworking capital, connecting New Zealand to the world. If there was more route diversity with better peering between networks (I hear this is improving after a long while) and cheaper national data circuits, it wouldn't matter so much but for now it's a big cost, performance and reliability factor.
If I understand it right, this leaves us with south Auckland and parts of the Waikato as locations meeting the above criteria, which is a bit limiting.
Even if you find a location, building data centres is expensive. Spark Digital's nicely designed new Takanini facility is moderately sized compared to overseas data centres, but it cost $60 million.
Overcoming the above hurdles is definitely possible, but looking over their shoulders, potential data centre operators will see a nebulous giant approaching, which is so big that it's hard to work out the size of it: Amazon Web Services.
AWS amply shows what "internet scale" means, and the company's continuing to build capacity around the world, while slashing prices for services provided from them. Lots of data centres with millions of servers make it possible.
The scale of Amazon is so huge that it believes very few entities will want to run their own data centres because its public cloud will have as good or better features as what anyone else could put together.
Amazon set up shop in Sydney two years ago and while it hasn't confirmed it yet, the word is that it will build two data centres across the ditch.
That's the competition for local operators, and it's formidable to say the least. It'll be interesting to see if AWS is content with remaining in Australia, or if it decides to come over to New Zealand too.
Gear: Knowroaming SIM sticker
The great thing about tech is that when you thought you'd seen it all, something new that you've never come across, or even thought about, appears.
Canada's Knowroaming is just that: a thin, plastic Subscriber Information Module (SIM) sticker that goes on top of your existing SIM. The idea is that you use the local SIM at home, and the Knowroaming one overseas - and avoid steep roaming charges.
I was sent a sticker with an applicator by Knowroaming and to be honest... didn't expect it to work. Applying the sticker isn't too fiddly however, and after you've downloaded an Android or iOS app, registered yourself, and topped up the prepay account, you're set to go.
As I had occasion to go Australia, I tried out Knowroaming there. The rates Knowroaming offer aren't all exorbitant - calling in Aussie is US$0.18 a minute for landlines and US$0.30 minute for mobiles.
Receiving calls are US$0.15 a minute; sending SMS to any country is US$0.22, receiving texts are free but casual data is pricey at US$0.15 a megabyte. Calling NZ landlines from Australia is US$0.18 a minute, mobiles US$0.22 and receiving calls is US$0.15.
Not the best pricing, nor the worst. One added bonus is that Knowroaming gives you a US and a UK number for free, and you can pay to have others as well.
Better yet: the US$7.99 a day (NZ$10.30) unlimited data offering.
In Australia, I added the Knowroaming APN to my phone, multitasked and looked for the option to enable the $7.99 a day data offer. While I was doing that, my phone downloaded emails and other data and chewed up 100 megabytes of data and... cut off my mobile data connection.
There was no way to add more data without an Internet connection so without my Vodafone $5 a day roaming I would've had to find Wi-Fi somewhere to get it going again. I can report that Knowroaming support is very quick and helpful. You can add auto top-up for the sticker of course, but I nevertheless didn't expect to be stranded like this.
Voice and SMS worked fine, but the data connection in Australia was decidedly average. Knowroaming only supports the older and slower 3G HSPA+ broadband, not LTE 4G which you could live with for a while even though the connection only managed 2-3Mbps down and less than one meg up.
What's not good is that Knowroaming routes data via North America. I saw latency (delay) times of 700-800 milliseconds which makes connections very unresponsive compared to local cellular broadband options.
As an acquaintance in the wireless industry asked when he saw the packet roundtrip times: "Where are you? On the moon?"
Email worked, YouTubes buffered, Google Maps (lots of connections) loaded one tile at the time, so the Knowroaming connection was suboptimal.
With better international routes for data, sharper pricing and an easier way to top up the Knowroaming account, the SIM sticker could be an option to save on roaming costs.
It does feel like a hack though, and you're left wondering if not doing all the above with a software defined SIM wouldn't be the way to go instead.
I'll stick with Vodafone's $5 a day deal for now, especially since it gives you 4G connectivity, and local SIMs where it's not available.
