Prime Minister Chris Hipkins surveys the post-Cyclone Gabrielle landscape. Photo / RNZ
Chorus said overnight that it will stop selling new copper services in areas covered by UFB fibre.
For all its drawbacks, an old-fashioned copper phone line would work through a power cut. It required no electricity. As long as it was plugged into the wall, your old phone would work.
With Cyclone Gabrielle, by contrast, mobile phone service was lost in large parts of Northland, the East Coast, Coromandel and parts of Auckland, as cell site backup batteries died after their allocated four to six hours. Where generators were on hand, they ran dry and could not be refuelled.
Chorus has granted a temporary exemption for areas hit by Gabrielle.
But overall, is the network operator right to implement what it calls a “stop-sell” in our new age of wild weather?
“People’s memories of copper lines working even when the power is out are largely from a very long time ago,” says Paul Brislen, head of the Telecommunications Forum, which represents Chorus and its rivals - at least in wireless services - Spark, Vodafone and 2degrees.
“The cabinetisation programme of the early 2000s means all copper lines are powered by cabinets and exchanges, and they fall back to battery power just as mobile and fibre lines do.”
In some Cyclone Gabrielle-hit areas, all phone lines were affected because the mains power was off for such a long period of time.
“That happened regardless of the lines technology used.”
Brislen adds: “Copper lines failed more than any other technology during the recent cyclone. In Northland, Chorus reports 15 per cent of copper lines were damaged compared with only 5 per cent for mobile or fibre.”
It is worth noting that while a small percentage of fibre was damaged, it had a big effect on the East Coast, as Chorus scrambled for days to repair the two fibre cables that provide Gisborne’s landline connection to the outside world and link East Coast celltowers to main telco networks.
“Copper lines don’t cope well with inundation and the electronics associated with copper lines were more easily damaged than those associated with either mobile or fibre. That is, copper lines can more easily suffer water damage after a storm, which slows internet connections for copper line users,” Brislen says.
“Once the power was restored we saw mobile sites were largely undamaged and we restored 90 per cent of the sites in the first 96 hours. The same can’t be said for copper lines.”
The “Cabinetisation” or “fibre-to-the-node” programme was designed to boost competition by introducing new roadside cabinets, which the likes of Vodafone and Orcon could install their own electronics in - allowing them to offer their own faster, more customised copper services.
“Many of the big copper cables - with hundreds-plus pairs of copper lines - were taken out as part of the fibre-to-the-node programme in the 2000s,” Chorus spokesman Steve Pettigrew told the Herald earlier this year. (The context was a query on whether Chorus could make hay selling copper as it withdrew service. The answer was ‘no’, because most of it’s already gone.)
Nowadays, copper - if you still have it - likely runs from your home to a neighbourhood cabinet - which requires power - and is in turn connected to the nearest exchange by fibre.
So copper isn’t the power-cut-defying hero it used to be.
But consumer advocate Craig Young, head of the Technology Users Association of NZ (Tuanz), says there are several “gotchas” around the demise of the service, which is driven both by Chorus’ copper withdrawal, and Spark sunsetting the public switched telephone network (PSTN) exchanges that underpin copper service. Spark says components for PTSN simply aren’t manufactured anymore, among other issues.
“The withdrawal of any service that reduces customer choice is never a great thing, but this move by Chorus is not surprising given the amount of fibre now in the ground,” Young says.
“Unlike Australia, New Zealand did not have a forced migration period when the new services were rolled out, but we do have a highly regulated manner in which Chorus works with the Commerce Commission to identify where they can stop selling and then withdraw the copper network.
“It’s incredibly important to ensure that no one that has a copper service is being forced off the service through this notice, and if users receive advice that it does, they should check with their retailer or the Commerce Commission website. It’s also important we ensure Chorus remains committed to the copper network where no fibre network is available and they continue to invest in maintaining the service levels on the network, especially in our rural communities.”
A Copper Withdrawal Code hammered out with the Commerce Commission offers several consumer protections.
Chorus can’t charge a household for a copper-to-fibre transition, and a household can’t be charged more for fibre than it was for copper. Your telecommunications provider also has to make sure you’re able to call 111 during a power cut - which could be by providing your household with a cheap mobile phone. (See the ComCom’s Q&A on copper withdrawal here).
If you think Chorus - or a retailer like Spark, Vodafone or 2degrees - is not following the Copper Withdrawal Code, you can complain to a free, Crown-backed mediation service called Telecommunications Dispute Resolution - which can be a useful port of call for any barney you’re having with your telco over the likes of billing or service levels with any type of phone or broadband account.
Chorus’ Pettigrew confirms the network operator will continue to supply copper services in areas without alternative technology, such as UFB fibre or fixed-wireless, as per its regulatory obligations.
But on the edges, the situation is a bit blurred. Some remote rural areas have copper lines that are not good enough for broadband, but will never be reached by fibre or fixed-wireless.
Chorus recommends those households apply for support via the Crown Infrastructure Partners’ Remote Users’ Scheme.
The scheme, announced this year, offers a $2000 grant to get broadband installed at a remote rural property (apply here).
Any household can register with Crown Infrastructure Partners. “Mid-year”, the Crown agency will put the connections out to tender, and internet-anywhere specialists such as Elon Musk’s Starlink will be able to tender to supply broadband to the applicants.
There are a couple of drawbacks though.
Tuanz’s Young welcomes the grant - which would cover a satellite dish and its installation - but says it could be more overall, given satellite broadband typically costs at least twice as much as UFB fibre or fixed-wireless. Even Starlink, regarded as keenly priced for the sector, charges $159 a month for a consumer-grade connection - with Musk vague about how long that rate will last - and $840 a month for a business-grade account that offers 350 megabits per second, or fibre-like speed.
The Remote Users Scheme is also modestly funded at $15m, or enough for 7500 broadband connections at $2000 per property (in the context that the Crown has chipped in $2.58 billion across the Ultrafast Broadband fibre rollout and the Rural Broadband and Mobile Blackspot initiatives since 2011).
After Cyclone Gabrielle, the Herald asked new Communications Minister Ginny Andersen if there was potential to accelerate the Remote Users Scheme, or if the Government would adopt the recommendation of a December MBIE report that recommended UFB fibre be rolled out to more areas to make rural telecommunications more resilient.
Andersen is still assessing options. She said telecommunications would likely be included in a Cyclone Gabrielle review.
Opponents of a review are planning a takeover.