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Bill Bennett: tech commentator on the growing popularity of Starlink · Best of Business

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  Speaker 1: You're listening to a podcast from News Talk ZEDB. Follow
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  Speaker 2: Now. Starlink has become the country's top rural internet provider
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  Speaker 2: overtaking Spark subscribers have jumped nearly fifty percent in the
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  Speaker 2: year to June twenty twenty five. They now have eighty
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  Speaker 2: five thousand customers, and this is according to the Commerce Commission,
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  Speaker 2: which estimates Staralink is now making up to one hundred
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  Speaker 2: and eighty five million dollars a year just in New Zealand.
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  Speaker 2: Bill Bennett is a tech and telecommunications commentator and with
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  Speaker 2: US Hi Bill.
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  Speaker 3: Hi, Good evening.
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  Speaker 2: Does this surprise you.
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  Speaker 3: No, it's been coming for a while. Starlink's been around
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  Speaker 3: for about four years now and it's been slowly gathering momentum.
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  Speaker 3: It's really been pulling away. What's been going on in
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  Speaker 3: the rural areas is that lots of royal areas are
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  Speaker 3: losing their copper telephone networks and as the copper goes out,
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  Speaker 3: people are replacing it where they can with other technologists
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  Speaker 3: and satellites one of the choices, and it's the choice
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  Speaker 3: that most of them seem to be making.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, So who's pulling out the copper?
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  Speaker 3: Is it Spark, Well, yes, no, it's sparking Chorus. The
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  Speaker 3: copper network is due to retire by I think twenty
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  Speaker 3: twenty eight now, so it's all going to be gone
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  Speaker 3: in the next three or four years, and it's going
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  Speaker 3: out like a bit by bit, and so as a
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  Speaker 3: region loses it, the people then have to move on
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  Speaker 3: to a different kind of broadband, different kind of common Yeah, you.
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  Speaker 2: Would have just thought, like, if you are the guys
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  Speaker 2: in charge of pulling out the copper, that you would
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  Speaker 2: be prepared to write at that very moment that you're
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  Speaker 2: pulling the copper out of I don't know why a
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  Speaker 2: kmukaw All of a sudden, there you are going, hey,
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  Speaker 2: and we've got a great offering. Look at our ultra
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  Speaker 2: fast warever.
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  Speaker 3: Well, yes, and Chorus has been doing that with broadband,
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  Speaker 3: but Churus can't actually sell, so it's been so it
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  Speaker 3: has to sell through the likes of Spark or one
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  Speaker 3: or two degrees or even other companies that will sell
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  Speaker 3: the fiber. There's two things. There's the wholesale network, which
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  Speaker 3: is Chorus, and there's the retailers, which people like Spark
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  Speaker 3: on one and two degrees. But they're not doing a
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  Speaker 3: great job of selling to these people. And one of
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  Speaker 3: the reasons they're not doing a great job is because
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  Speaker 3: when the fiber network was put in originally, sorry, let's
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  Speaker 3: just go back, there's a five network and is a
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  Speaker 3: Copper network. The Copper network, the five network goes to
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  Speaker 3: eighty seven percent of New Zealand, but it doesn't go
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  Speaker 3: into the rural areas. So in those rural areas they're
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  Speaker 3: now losing the Copper network, which is the only terrestrial
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  Speaker 3: network they have at the moment. And in lots of
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  Speaker 3: places there is fixed Wildest broadband available from one of
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  Speaker 3: the mobile companies, and there's also fixed Wildest broadband available
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  Speaker 3: from some regional companies as well, And the Commics Commission
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  Speaker 3: report notes and quite rightly that the regional companies do
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  Speaker 3: an excellent job for those people. So if you're on
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  Speaker 3: a small town in New Zealand, you might have a
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  Speaker 3: small company in that town which will fix you up
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  Speaker 3: with wireless broadband, and you know you'll run into them
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  Speaker 3: when you're in the supermarket and you'll say, hey, look,
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  Speaker 3: I wasn't getting good speeds last night. Can you come
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  Speaker 3: and fix it? And they will if they're not sort
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  Speaker 3: of remote and all sitting in towers in Auckland, like
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  Speaker 3: the big mobile companies, and they do a very good
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  Speaker 3: job of servicing rural people. But there's still a move
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  Speaker 3: to all satellite. And the reason for satellite is basically
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  Speaker 3: satellite technology is better than a lot of fixed wireless.
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  Speaker 3: Is the risks the regional fixed wildest companies, but as
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  Speaker 3: I say, they do a very good job, but some
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  Speaker 3: of the big firms. There's two types of wireless in
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  Speaker 3: rural New Zealand, and one is like pretty much the
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  Speaker 3: same as the wildness you get in the city. So
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  Speaker 3: if you have broadband on that is pretty good. It
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  Speaker 3: might be five G and it might be really fast,
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  Speaker 3: and you might be able to watch streaming Netflix and
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  Speaker 3: so on. But if you're a bit further out, you've
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  Speaker 3: got this horrible slow thing which isn't good enough to
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  Speaker 3: watch streaming video. But of course satellite can deliver that
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  Speaker 3: streaming video and it's not that expensive. It's more expensive
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  Speaker 3: than a fiber connection or a widest conection, but it's
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  Speaker 3: not that much more expensive and it's a much better service.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, Bill, thank you for very much. I really appreciate
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  Speaker 2: you explaining all of that Bill Bennett tick commentator.
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