Cell towers were knocked out of action when Cyclone Gabrielle cut power to regions of the North Island. Photo / Bevan Conley: File
Cell towers were knocked out of action when Cyclone Gabrielle cut power to regions of the North Island. Photo / Bevan Conley: File
EDITORIAL
It is said there have been five ages of communication: The pre-verbal, the oral, the literate, the electric and the electronic ages.
All this advancement and development counted for nought in the early hours of February 14 after a well-pre-warned weather event howled across the North Island of Aotearoa.
Now we know that cutting the power also severs our ability to communicate with each other.
Cyclone Gabrielle laid bare the fragility of our communications networks - frustrating for some and terrifying for others, particularly in hard-hit Hawke’s Bay and Tairāwhiti.
Whole communities were left in the dark, literally and figuratively, with no way of knowing whether anyone knew about their predicament or if anyone was coming to assist.
It also provided a blaring clarion about our overall telecommunications resilience nationwide.
It is now apparent the backup plan for electricity outages at cellphone towers is to drive to each site with a diesel-powered generator to power them back up. Even a home burglar alarm system has a backup battery to keep it going during a power outage.
Shockingly, this is something telcos and the Government have been aware of for some time. This we know, thanks in a large part to the work of the Herald’s tech writer Chris Keall.
An MBIE report in December noted: “The resilience of New Zealand’s telecommunications networks is also dependent on the resilience of other infrastructure that carries it (e.g. bridges), along which it runs (e.g. roads or railway corridors) or upon which it depends for electricity.
“Quick response and repair times and holding sufficient spare equipment or resources at remote locations are critical where there is no back-up.”
18 February 2023
Two girls stand where the Dartmoor Bridge used to span the Mangaone River. All infrastructure sustained damage in Cyclone Gabrielle. Photo / Mike Scott
Meanwhile, many locations didn’t have their cellphone access knocked out, simply because they don’t have any to start with.
In December, the Government announced the Remote Users Scheme for remote rural properties lacking decent broadband to apply for a $2000 grant “towards set-up and installation costs of a suitable broadband solution”.
Further back in October, then Digital Economy and Communications Minister David Clark announced the Government would provide a “direct allocation” of 5G-friendly airwaves to the mobile network players, giving it to them for free.
In exchange, Spark, Vodafone and 2degrees agreed to expand their mobile networks in provincial and rural areas.
Both these initiatives from the Government late last year are clear signals of awareness of the flimsy communications service available across New Zealand.
Now the telcos, who have already benefited from the “remote users” grants and the free 5G allocations, need to stump up. So far, Spark has said it will spend at least $24m expanding its 5G network in provincial and rural areas under the quid pro quo deal, a drop in the bucket compared with the $180m it paid for 4G spectrum at the 2014 auction.
Pensioners are scrimping to get enough coins to pay for a top-up to their prepay phones while profitable telecommunications companies roll in money.
The least the businesses could do is provide a reliable network, with proper preparations in reserve for a rainy day or three.
The 12-year, multi-billion dollar ultrafast broadband fibre rollout officially wrapped up in December, still leaving about 650,000 New Zealanders waiting. Some of these are homes and businesses on the outskirts of towns and cities but many are rural and isolated.
But even that’s not resilient enough. Chorus reported Cyclone Gabrielle broke two fibre cables to the East Coast, while the Telecommunications Forum said fibre was swept away with destroyed bridges in a number of areas.
Spark, Vodafone NZ, 2degrees and Chorus are private companies that have collectively spent billions upgrading their networks since 2010. Spark chief executive Jolie Hodson says the company spends $100 million a year of capital on “resilience”.
This past week, Spark also reported a 368 per cent jump in first-half profit to $837 million, including proceeds from selling 70 per cent of its cell tower network to a Canadian pension fund for $911m.
More of the sums running through the wire transfers to the telcos need to be spent on an operational, resilient network with decent backup provisions for the next time the lights go out.
