Telecoms New Zealand

New Zealand was not slow to adopt telephony. The first phone exchange opened in Port Chalmers in 1879, Christchurch followed in 1881 and in the same year Auckland. The government set up a department, NZPT, to control the growth of the service. 1930 saw all the main centres linked by toll lines and the first international phone call to Australia was made in that year also. 125,000 New Zealanders were connected by 1950 and this expanded to nearly 700,000 ten years later. The first telecommunications satellite station was commissioned at Warkworth in 1971.

Meanwhile the NZPT had become a sate owned enterprise under the fourth Labour Government in 1987 and New Zealand became the first nation in the world to totally deregulate the market in 1988. The result was that the government telecommunications system was sold to an American consortium of large telcos and named NZ Telecom. Shortly after this a new player entered the market, Clear Communications. There has been much tooing and frowing since with New Zealand telcos changing hands inevitably to other overseas companies. Although there are close to 30 competitors to NZ Telecom this company dominates the market both because of its control of the wired infrastructure (the last mile) and because of the change of policy of Clear Communications who’s initial promise of large investment to provide true competition was markedly reduced when Australian Telco Telstra bought a controlling interest.

Development has continued but with the dominant position of one company, NZ Telecom, innovation and change has been slower than many would like. An example is the speed and availability of high speed internet connections (broadband) which lag far behind most other developed nations.