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Kurt Rodgers: Chorus network strategy manager on Kiwi households using more than Australian counterparts · Best of Business

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  Speaker 2: The average Kiwi home uses twice as much data a
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  Speaker 2: month as the average Australian home, with sport and gaming
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  Speaker 2: driving our biggest traffic spikes. According to Chorus, one of
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  Speaker 2: the seventeen biggest spikes this year of the seventeen, I
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  Speaker 2: should say fourteen were driven by updates to the video
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  Speaker 2: game Fortnite. Other spikes came from the Mike Tyson Jake
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  Speaker 2: Paul fight and the All Blacks game against Japan. Chorus
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  Speaker 2: network strategy manager Kurt Rodgers is with me. Good evening,
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  Speaker 2: Hey Ryan, how are you good? Thank you, Good to
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  Speaker 2: have you in the studio. First of all, why do
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  Speaker 2: we use more, so much more than the Aussies.
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  Speaker 3: Well, a lot of it's to do with better infrastructure
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  Speaker 3: here in New Zealand. So you know, we've rolled out
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  Speaker 3: a lot of fiber, and fiber is really the key
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  Speaker 3: to having good quality broadband at home. The Australians have
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  Speaker 3: taken a different path, so they've got multiple technologies, particularly
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  Speaker 3: a lot of copper and a lot of wireless technology
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  Speaker 3: and it just puts a bit of a constraint doesn't
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  Speaker 3: have the same capacity as we have in New Zealand.
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  Speaker 3: So really a bit of that's about the infrastructure.
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  Speaker 2: So ours is easier, quicker, faster, therefore we use more
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  Speaker 2: of it.
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  Speaker 3: No constraints, right, yeah, all.
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  Speaker 2: Right, So what about the spikes? How do we manage those?
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  Speaker 2: Does it result in cutouts, network cutouts, et cetera.
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  Speaker 3: Well no, And that's the great thing about fiber infrastructure.
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  Speaker 3: It's a bit like having a digital highway that's got
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  Speaker 3: lots and lots of lanes to add. So when things
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  Speaker 3: do happen like live sports streaming, game downloads and in
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  Speaker 3: various things happening in busy time, the fiber network is
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  Speaker 3: able to just expand and handle all of that without
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  Speaker 3: really any impact on your experience.
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  Speaker 2: What's up with Wykaso, particularly Topiiti and what it was?
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  Speaker 2: Everywhere in Wyko except Hamilton, from what I could see,
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  Speaker 2: had the largest consumption of anywhere in New Zealand.
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  Speaker 3: Yeh's an interesting thing is Look, there's a couple of
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  Speaker 3: things going on there. So there's a demographic thing that
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  Speaker 3: plays out that younger generation and also Mold Pacific and
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  Speaker 3: Asian communities much more online and are much more engaged
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  Speaker 3: in entertainment and online media, and so you've got these
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  Speaker 3: demographic issues that play out in places like South Orton
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  Speaker 3: and Waikato. But the other specific thing to Waikato is
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  Speaker 3: we've been building a lot of new subdivisions and a
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  Speaker 3: lot of expansion. He know, it's part of the Golden Triangle,
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  Speaker 3: huge population growth, and we suspect there's quite a few
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  Speaker 3: people who work in the city but are choosing to
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  Speaker 3: work for them that makes sense in these new places,
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  Speaker 3: and that's what we think is particularly driving.
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  Speaker 2: How much is too much? I mean, we're using thirteen
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  Speaker 2: times more data today than we were ten years ago.
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  Speaker 2: We at some point going to each saturation point.
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  Speaker 3: Well, I think it's just going to keep going, right,
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  Speaker 3: I mean, there's always new things around the corner that
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  Speaker 3: people are wanting to do. As you know, more and
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  Speaker 3: more things that we do offline moved online, and as
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  Speaker 3: new technologies come along. I mean, who knows what virtual
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  Speaker 3: reality or artificial intelligence is going to bring to us.
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  Speaker 3: So we're thinking it's going to keep going and keep growing.
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  Speaker 2: Are the kids in Australia who aren't using as much
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  Speaker 2: data as we are here in New Zealand better off? Mentally, well,
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  Speaker 2: I don't know.
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  Speaker 3: We'll have to talk. We'll have to ask some parents
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  Speaker 3: over there, but they're probably just a bit more frustrated
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  Speaker 3: that the Fortnite game takes a lot longer to downloads.
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  Speaker 2: All right, thanks very much for coming on. That is
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  Speaker 2: Corus Kurt Rogers
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