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Mobile phone hopeful NZ Communications has secured American investment for a third mobile phone network.
The company - chaired by former All Black Bill Osborne - is promising to detail its 3G challenge to industry giants Telecom and Vodafone before the end of the year.
The new stakeholder is Trilogy International Partners, which has a background building networks in South America. It has bought into the company through a merger with Econet Wireless, the South African company that formed NZ Communications with the Hautaki Trust and its Crown-allocated Maori frequencies.
Osborne would not indicate the launch date or the marketing approach but said New Zealanders spent a comparatively small amount of time on voice communications, suggesting there was room for another player.
The company has been building its network in Auckland, Christchurch and Wellington and has signed deals to link into the Vodafone network temporarily until the network reached the entire country by 2011.
Osborne said NZ Communications did not expect to be on the same scale as Vodafone or Telecom, which have respectively 55 per cent and 45 per cent of the mobile market.
Telecom spokesman Nick Brown said: "Our focus remains firmly on providing great value mobile products and services for our customers, and we have some exciting things on the horizon including a new mobile network launching in November."
But New Zealand Communications and its 3G mobile phone network is likely to be marketing to new customers at the same time.
Telecom is trying to attract its clients over to its upgraded 3G network, lamenting in its half-year results that the delay has allowed its share of mobile customers to fall.
Other investors in New Zealand Communications are Hong Kong's General Enterprise Management, which owns 25 per cent, London's Communication Venture Partners, 25 per cent, and Maori investors Hautaki Trust, which has 16 per cent with the right to move to 20. Other business partners hold 5 per cent.
