Friday, 7 May 2021, 2:01 pm New Zealand’s rural mobile users face slower download
speeds than people in towns. In almost every case the rural
mobile experience is worse.
Although the gap between rural
and urban has closed, it could open again as carriers roll
out 5G networks.
Both the
updates to the Rural Broadband Initiative and the Mobile
Black Spot Fund have played a role.
Rural
Connectivity Group kudos
Above all, credit must go
to the Rural Connectivity Group. This is a joint venture
between Spark, Vodafone and 2degrees set up to deliver rural
network upgrades.
The three companies had government
Mobile black spots: Meet the Kiwis with worse mobile coverage than the developing world
13 Jan, 2021 04:00 PM
11 minutes to read
West Coast Regional Councillor Laura Coll McLaughlin at Denniston next to her total station. She is a surveyor by trade. Photo / Supplied
Tom Dillane is a reporter at the New Zealand Heraldtom.dillane@nzme.co.nz@tomdillane1
Teresa Wyndham-Smith remembers with a laugh when it first dawned on her that mobile coverage was better in West Africa than the West Coast of New Zealand.
That was five years of signal silence ago.
The 57-year-old writer and journalist returned to her home country after a decade in Ghana, and plonked herself down in Te Miko, a settlement on the 1000-plus kms of mobile black spots along New Zealand highways.
Voice calling, VoLTE and RCG Why you might not be able to make an emergency call from your mobile phone this summer geekzone.co.nz - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from geekzone.co.nz Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.