Telecommunications in New Zealand are fairly typical for an industrialised country. Fixed-line broadband and telephone services are largely provided through copper-based networks, although fibre-based services are increasingly common.

Spark New Zealand Spark New Zealand Limited is a New Zealand telecommunications company providing fixed-line plain old telephone service, telephone services, a mobile phone network, internet service provider, internet access services, and (through its Spark Digi ...

Vodafone New Zealand Vodafone New Zealand Limited is a New Zealand telecommunications company. It was a subsidiary of the London-listed company Vodafone Plc until 31 July 2019, when its sale to a consortium comprising Infratil Limited and Brookfield Asset Manageme ...

, and

2degrees 2degrees is a New Zealand telecommunications provider. Its mobile network launched on 4 August 2009 after nine years of planning. 2degrees offers prepaid and pay-monthly mobile services as well as fixed-line phone and broadband services. 2degre ...

provide most services, although a number of smaller mobile virtual network operators also exist.

History

The first telegraph opened in New Zealand between the port of Lyttelton and Christchurch on 16 June 1862. The line was constructed along the Lyttelton - Christchurch railway line. The Vogel Era from 1870 saw a major expansion of the telegraph network, including an inter-island cable. Telegraph lines increased from in 1866 to in 1876. The first overseas telegraph cable between Australia and New Zealand began operation on 21 February 1876. The Electric Telegraph Department formed to manage the growing telegraph network was merged with Post Office Department to form the New Zealand Post and Telegraph Department in 1881. Following early experiments with telephones on telegraph lines, the colonial government established a state monopoly in telephony with the Electric Telegraph Act 1875. By 1900 there were 7,150 subscribers to telephone services. Telephony subscriptions grew greatly over the next century, it was estimated by 1965 that 35% of New Zealanders had a telephone. By the 1980s there was major telephony traffic congestion on the New Zealand Post Office network. In Auckland, the central exchange was overloaded and "verging on collapse" elsewhere in New Zealand users often experienced network overloading and crashes. Some areas still had manual telephone exchanges; Queenstown, for example, wasn't upgraded to automatic service until 1988. The New Zealand Post Office was highly inefficient, being hamstrung as a government department and required to apply to the Treasury for capital investment. As the Post Office was a monopoly, it had no incentive to improve customer service. The monopoly over telecommunications came to an end in 1987 when Telecom New Zealand was formed, initially as a state-owned enterprise and then privatised in 1990. Competition began in the early 1990s, greatly reducing prices. The first competitor to market was

Clear Communications Clear Communications was a telecommunications company based in New Zealand. Until merging into Telstra's operations in 2001, it was the biggest rival to Telecom New Zealand. Background Prior to 1987, New Zealand's telecommunications sector w ...

, a consortium of North American and New Zealand businesses.

Chorus Chorus may refer to: Music * Chorus (song) or refrain, line or lines that are repeated in music or in verse * Chorus effect, the perception of similar sounds from multiple sources as a single, richer sound * Chorus form, song in which all verse ...

, which was split from Telecom (now Spark) in 2011, still owns the majority of the telecommunications infrastructure, but competition from other providers has increased. A large-scale rollout of gigabit-capable fibre to the premises, branded as

Ultra-Fast Broadband The Ultra-Fast Broadband initiative is a New Zealand Government programme of building fibre-to-the-home networks covering 87% of the population by the end of 2022. It is a public–private partnership of the government with four companies with ...

, began in 2009 with a target of being available to 87% of the population by 2022. , the United Nations

International Telecommunication Union The International Telecommunication Union is a specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for many matters related to information and communication technologies. It was established on 17 May 1865 as the International Telegraph Unio ...

ranks New Zealand 13th in the development of information and communications infrastructure.

Telephones

Country calling code Country calling codes or country dial-in codes are telephone number prefixes for reaching telephone subscribers in the networks of the member countries or regions of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). The codes are defined by the ...

: 64 ** The same code is also used to reach

Scott Base Scott Base is a New Zealand Antarctic research station at Pram Point on Ross Island near Mount Erebus in New Zealand's Ross Dependency territorial claim. It was named in honour of Captain Robert Falcon Scott, RN, leader of two British expedit ...

Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean, it contains the geographic South Pole. Antarctica is the fifth-largest cont ...

and the United States base

McMurdo Station McMurdo Station is a United States Antarctic research station on the south tip of Ross Island, which is in the New Zealand-claimed Ross Dependency on the shore of McMurdo Sound in Antarctica. It is operated by the United States through the ...

nearby.

Mobile phone system

* Number of mobile connections: 4.7 million (2010) * Coverage available to approx 97% of the population. ** Operators: ***

(operating

UMTS The Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) is a third generation mobile cellular system for networks based on the GSM standard. Developed and maintained by the 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project), UMTS is a component of the In ...

and LTE) **** Virtual network operators: Warehouse Mobile (owned by The Warehouse Group) ***

(operating UMTS,

HSDPA High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) is an amalgamation of two mobile protocols—High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) and High Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA)—that extends and improves the performance of existing 3G mobile telecommunic ...

and LTE) ****Virtual network operators: Skinny (owned by Spark NZ), Digital Island, Vocus (previously CallPlus) Compass Flexiroam, ***

(operating GSM, UMTS, HSDPA and LTE) ****Virtual network operators: Flexiroam, Black+White, M2, Kogan Mobile NZ, MyRepublic

Fixed-line telephone system

*Number of fixed line connections: 1.92 million (2000) *Individual lines available to 99% of residences. *VoIP Cloud Based Voice services are now mainstream. *Traditional Copper line Operators: *

Chorus Limited Chorus is a provider of telecommunications infrastructure throughout New Zealand. It is listed on the NZX stock exchange and is in the NZX 50 Index. It is the owner of the majority of telephone lines and exchange equipment in New Zealand. It i ...

: A large numbers of ISPs (referred to as "retail service providers") retail Chorus' connections to personal and business customers. As a wholesaler, Chorus does not retail internet connections to end users.

Cable and microwave links

* Domestic: **

Optical fibre An optical fiber, or optical fibre in Commonwealth English, is a flexible, transparent fiber made by drawing glass (silica) or plastic to a diameter slightly thicker than that of a human hair. Optical fibers are used most often as a means t ...

and

microwave Microwave is a form of electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths ranging from about one meter to one millimeter corresponding to frequencies between 300 MHz and 300 GHz respectively. Different sources define different frequency ra ...

links between cities **

Submarine A submarine (or sub) is a watercraft capable of independent operation underwater. It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability. The term is also sometimes used historically or colloquially to refer to remotely op ...

optical fibre cables between the

North Island The North Island, also officially named Te Ika-a-Māui, is one of the two main islands of New Zealand, separated from the larger but much less populous South Island by the Cook Strait. The island's area is , making it the world's 14th-larges ...

and the

South Island The South Island, also officially named , is the larger of the two major islands of New Zealand in surface area, the other being the smaller but more populous North Island. It is bordered to the north by Cook Strait, to the west by the Tasman ...

* International: ** Submarine cables: *** Hawaiki Cable (launched July 2018) ***

Southern Cross Cable The Southern Cross Cable is a trans-Pacific network of telecommunications cables commissioned in 2000. The network is operated by the Bermuda-registered company ''Southern Cross Cables Limited''. The network has 28,900 km of submarine an ...

(to Australia and Hawaii) *** TASMAN 2 (to Australia) *** Tasman Global Access (to Australia, completed March 2017) *** Moana Cable (proposed) ** Satellite earth stations: 2

Intelsat Intelsat S.A. (formerly INTEL-SAT, INTELSAT, Intelsat) is a multinational satellite services provider with corporate headquarters in Luxembourg and administrative headquarters in Tysons Corner, Virginia, United States. Originally formed as I ...

(Pacific Ocean)

Radio

*Radio broadcast stations: AM 124, FM 290,

shortwave Shortwave radio is radio transmission using shortwave (SW) radio frequencies. There is no official definition of the band, but the range always includes all of the high frequency band (HF), which extends from 3 to 30 MHz (100 to 10 me ...

4 (1998), 4 on Freeview digital satellite. **See also:

List of radio stations in New Zealand The following is a list of radio stations in New Zealand. New Zealand network stations Several networks operate across multiple centres or nationwide. Most have resulted from the consolidation of a group of existing stations and many have cha ...

*Radios: 3.75 million (1997)

Television

*Television broadcast stations: 41 (plus 52 medium-power

repeater In telecommunications, a repeater is an electronic device that receives a signal and retransmits it. Repeaters are used to extend transmissions so that the signal can cover longer distances or be received on the other side of an obstruction. Som ...

s and over 650 low-power repeaters) (1997) **These transmit 4 nationwide free-to-air networks and a few regional or local single transmitter stations. Analogue was phased out between September 2012 and December 2013 **Digital Satellite pay TV is also available and carries most terrestrial networks. **Freeview digital free satellite with a dozen SD channels, with SD feeds of the terrestrial HD freeview channels. **Freeview, free-to-air digital terrestrial HD and SD content. **Cable TV is available in some urban areas with Vodafone's broadband services. **See also: List of New Zealand television channels *Televisions: 1.926 million (1997)

Internet

Internet Service Provider An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise priva ...

s (ISPs): 36 (2000) *Internet users: 4.55 million (2021) *Fixed internet connections: 1.24 million (2013) *

Country code Country codes are short alphabetic or numeric geographical codes (geocodes) developed to represent countries and dependent areas, for use in data processing and communications. Several different systems have been developed to do this. The term ...

(Top level domain):

.nz .nz is the Internet country code top-level domain ( ccTLD) for New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five ...

Telecommunications Development Levy

The government charges a $50 million Telecommunications Development Levy annually to fund improvements to communications infrastructure such as the Rural Broadband Initiative. It is payable by telecommunications firms with an operating revenue of over $10 million, in proportion to their qualified revenue.