Telcos copped a lot of flak after Cyclone Gabrielle as parts of Northland, Auckland and especially the East Coast lost phone and internet service - with Gisborne, Napier and Wairoa especially hard-hit as both fibre links into the region suffered multiple cuts and cell tower batteries ran dry.
UFB network operator Chorus says it’s now better prepared for the next natural disaster - be it fire, flood or cyclone - thanks to two mobile exchange on wheels units (or “Meows”).
The idea is that these self-contained units could potentially replace a destroyed exchange within one or two days, rather than weeks or months.
Each Meow can run on mains power, but also has its own generator and 50 kilowatt hours’ worth of lithium-ion batteries, and can support up to 25,000 fibre connections, roughly equivalent to the size of Chorus’s exchange in Gisborne. A Meow can also be used to help reconnect cell sites to the main network.
The two units are housed in six-metre shipping containers, in a set-up designed almost from scratch after Chorus approached Albany-based Shape Energy - part of the Shape Group owned by Hideaki Fukutake, the son of Japanese billionaire Soichiro Fukutake, who took up residence in NZ in 2009. Shape provides traditional back-up power solutions such as diesel generators, but is also pioneering solar, lithium-ion and even hydrogen fuel cell-based “microgrids”.
Its story began when IT Power developed its “Datablok” container for data centres in 2015. IT Power was bought by Shape in 2022. The Meow uses the same shell. Rousselot calls it an all-Kiwi effort.
Chorus bills the Meows as self-contained and “indestructible”.
They were completed at the end of September.
One is stationed in the North Island, at Pukekohe, and the other in the South Island at Rolleston - the idea being they could be trucked to anywhere in NZ within hours.
Chorus CEO JB Rousselot told the Herald they could be mixed or matched, with both Meows being sent to the same disaster zone if necessary. The two units together would feed 50,000 connections.
He concedes they’re too heavy for a helicopter, but says they could have been carried by either of the two navy ships deployed to the East Coast in February after Cyclone Gabrielle.
Chorus is also implementing more meat-and-potatoes approaches toward better network resilience. Fibre cables were strung across gullies after bridges were wiped out by flooding caused by Cyclone Gabrielle in February. Rousselot said even when they’re finally repaired, Chorus will stick with aerial cabling, rather than going back to trenching. Fibre will also be strung above bridges deemed high risk in future events.
In point-of-fact, the Meows would not have helped Chorus during Gabrielle, as no exchange was destroyed.
Nevertheless, “the most recent weather event was a sharp reminder that resilience is important”, Rousselot says.
He’s immediately familiar with catastrophic damage
“I was at Telstra across the ditch when we had a big exchange fire in Warrnambool. And when those things happen, it can take months to recover,” Rousselot said.
The southwest Victoria exchange fire cut off phone and internet access for around 100,000 customers. Repairs took 20 days.
In the wake of Cyclone Gabrielle, Spark chief executive Jolie Hodson referenced a more recent Australian disaster: the “Black Summer” of 2019/20 that saw extensive bush fires, and damage to telco infrastructure across several states. She said the public-private partnership model used to rebuild mobile networks across the Tasman, and make them more disaster-proff, could serve as a template for New Zealand’s Gabrielle response.
The bushfires led to a wide-ranging Australian government review into infrastructure and community resilience. A two-year A$37 million Strengthening Telecommunications Against Natural Disaster (Stand) programme was established to fund resilience improvements in regional telecommunications networks.
This included a A$23m Mobile Network Hardening Programme to fund increased battery storage at regional mobile sites of the three Australian mobile networks. The target was 12 hours of battery storage, and the funding provided up to 50 per cent of the cost of these projects. The programme has funded approximately 1000 site upgrades.
Here, the first round of investigation into telcos’ response to Gabrielle did not result in any public-private spending, or any mandated measures (although Spark, Vodafone and 2degrees have all been pursuing various resilience upgrades; see below).
The second phase of the investigation isn’t scheduled to take place until after the new Government is installed. Presumptive Technology Minister Judith Collins isn’t commenting on any developments in the portfolio until the incoming Parliament takes shape.
If a PPP is ultimately put on the table, why should taxpayers chip in any funds to help telcos get their networks into shape?
Hodson said the other post-Gabrielle point was that telecommunications outages didn’t happen in a vacuum. Of some 660 cell sites that lost service, only two were actually damaged by the cyclone. Power outages and the collapse of transport networks were the main problems. Again, the Spark boss said that meant there had to be a co-ordinated public-private effort to improve resilience.
Telecommunications Forum chief executive Paul Brislen said all telcos moved generators and network engineers into the Hawke’s Bay region ahead of the cyclone, but “the devastation and breadth of the impact caught everyone by surprise”. The widespread destruction of roads and bridges made it difficult to get diesel to the area.
And when generators did get to cell sites, there was a spate of thefts.
Spark, One NZ and 2degrees have been working to boost their networks’ disaster resistance on various fronts, including better battery and generator solutions for cell sites (more on which below) and, simply, buying many more generators.
But their key drive has been through partnerships that will allow you to send a text message from a regular smartphone via satellite, when cellular service is not available. One NZ will deliver this service through a partnership with Elon Musk’s Starlink from late next year, and Spark and 2degrees through partnerships with Starlink rival Lynk - also from late next year.
iPhone 14 and 15 owners can already send emergency texts via satellite by dint of Apple’s partnership with communications satellite network provider GlobalStar - a service that recently had its first real-life test when two hikers lost in Arthur’s Pass, outside cellular coverage, successfully used it to contact police. A West Coast Air Rescue chopper was dispatched.
In the days after Cyclone Gabrielle, East Coast iwi Ngāti Porou flew in 31 Starlink kits to connect remote communities through charter flights arranged via its commercial arm, Ngāti Porou Holdings.
The telcos also also brought in satellite gear, though were coy about saying from where. We’ve also seen Spark, One NZ and 2degrees all become Starlink resellers over the past few months, offering business-grade satellite dishes from Elon Musk’s firm - which can each handle 20 or more users at once. A business-grade Starlink dish can also be used to connect a cell site to a main network if fibre is cut.
But the real difference will be the coming services that will let almost any cellphone - without any alternation - act like a satellite phone, giving everyone in a disaster area connectivity, not just those in reach of a home or small business with a Starlink dish on its roof.
Things seem on track for late next year, if text-only at first (2degrees and Spark partner Lynk recently demonstrated a successful voice call between two regular cellphones, connected to each other via satellite, but it will be a few years before the provider has enough satellites in its network for blanket voice and data coverage).
Meantime, here are the latest updates from the three mobile network operators on their efforts to increase the resilience of their networks.
“We understand mobile connectivity is an important lifeline for our customers, and we continue to focus on improving resiliency, learning lessons from extreme weather events like the Auckland floods and Cyclone Gabrielle earlier this year. By collaborating with SpaceX to offer coverage like never before, starting with an SMS service by the end of 2024, we will add an extra layer of resilience on top of our existing terrestrial network that will operate independently,” One NZ spokesman Matt Flood said.
“When the service goes live, there will be far greater coverage across the country than available now, whether you’re out on your boat, climbing a mountain, fixing a remote road or on your farm –we’ve got the safety of New Zealanders and New Zealand businesses front of mind. As we saw during Cyclone Gabrielle, Starlink satellite internet proved itself as a vital tool in connecting the worst-hit communities while fixes were deployed.
“In the meantime, we continue to assess our fixed and mobile backhaul network, eliminating single points of failure where possible, and adding redundant routes for traffic to flow in the event of cable cuts or weather damage. With 80 per cent of all Cyclone Gabrielle-related outages linked to a loss of power, we have continued an ongoing programme of work to refresh battery back-up at cell sites.
“As these provide only temporary power, we have also purchased another 70 generators to complement our existing stock, deployed around the country, ready to be dispatched to sites if and when needed.”
Flood added, “We’re proud of the cross-industry work that happened after Cyclone Gabrielle to get 98 per cent of our network back up and running inside a week, but we are committed to always learning and considering options to improve for future events.
“Any discussion on further resilience needs to involve other infrastructure providers that any telecommunication network anywhere in the world relies on – including the electricity grids that power networks and the roads that fibre cables run on.”
“At Spark, we are conscious of our role as a lifeline utility and invest more than $100m into network resilience every year,” Spark spokeswoman Althea Lovell said.
“Following recent severe weather events, we’ve been exploring new ways to prepare and adapt for climate change. We have just completed the rollout of our OTN [Opticial Transport Network] 2.0, which is the backbone of our network and can now automatically re-route “traffic in the event of a fibre cut to significantly reduce outage times.
“We have also made enhancements to the network which connects our mobile cell sites back to our core network, which will provide us with more diverse paths to reduce network impact and provide us with greater automation capability.
“We also think satellite has a part to play when it comes to resilience and are currently trialling satellite broadband and satellite-to-mobile services with our partners to provide further resilience for our customers.”
“Since Cyclone Gabrielle we have continued to mature options for cell site backhaul using LEO (low Earth orbit) satellites,” a 2degrees spokesman said.
“If we restore a site on generator, we still need backhaul of data to function [a landline or wireless backhaul link connects a cell tower to the rest of the network]. So, if there are fibre cuts in addition to power outages, we can deploy a satellite solution - for example, using Starlink- to cell sites. We have growing experience in using Starlink due to our work with business customers on resilient solutions at their remote premises.
“Since Gabrielle, we have also increased our generator fleet and worked with our team on priority deployment plans in the event of major issues. We have also upgraded many of our batteries around the country.”
Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald’s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.
The telco says the service will quickly expand over 2025.