Spark top for reliability in opensignal report

Friday, 27 September 2024, 7:24 pm
Article: Bill Bennett

Spark wins reliability experience, 2degrees 5G shines in Opensignal report

Spark is the first winner of Opensignal’s New Zealand Reliability Experience award while 2degrees stays ahead of the pack in the 5G Experience categories. One New Zealand is top in the Download Speed Experience category.

Reliability Experience is a measure of the ability to connect to and complete basic tasks on a network. Spark takes top spot in the category with a score of 853 points on a scale running from 100 to 1000. One NZ and 2degrees are both in second place.

Opensignal says the Reliability Experience score: “Measures how much consumers can depend on their mobile operator’s network.” For comparison, earlier this year the analyst company says Denmark tops the world table for Reliability Experience with a score of 934. New Zealand ranks in tenth place among the 20 Asia-Pacific nations covered by the research. Australia is in sixth place.

Coverage experience

Spark is also first for coverage experience with a score of nine out of a possible ten. One NZ is runner up with a score of 8.2 and 2degrees brings up the rear with 7.7. This means that Opensignal sees Spark as the carrier with the widest mobile network coverage.

2degrees may be behind the pack with broad network coverage, but it dominates the field for 5G experience for the second report in a row. It is outright winner in six of the 14 categories in the Opensignal report and joint winner in a further four categories.

Spark was top for download speed experience in the previous Opensignal Mobile Network Experience Report. This time it was pipped by One NZ which saw its score increase by 60 percent over the year while the other two carriers saw their scores improve by around 30 percent.

Speeding up

Opensignal says there were increases in average 5G download speeds on all three networks. Average 5G speeds now range from 32Mbps on Spark and 2degrees to nearly 100Mbps on One NZ’s network.

New Zealand’s mobile carriers outperform Australia when it comes to Opensignal’s download speed experience table with a speed of 293.8Mbps while Australia’s sits at 181.1Mbps.

New Zealand also comes out ahead of Australia for upload speed experience with a collective speed of 10Mbps compared to Australia’s 8.7Mbps.

Renee Mateparae, Spark’s network and operations director, says her company was particularly pleased to win in the most reliable network and widest coverage categories: “We invest significantly in our mobile network each year to expand coverage and capacity across Aotearoa while further strengthening resilience.”

Wireless IoT frees Chorus from fibre cage

Chorus plans to launch Neura, a IoT LoRaWAN-based asset management system in a step away from its established role as a fibre broadband network provider. It says Neura will target councils, utilities and other businesses with real-time monitoring and management of assets such as water systems, public lighting, power and waste collection.

The company is running a trial with an unnamed utility provider and already offers coverage in Auckland, Hamilton, Tauranga, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin. Further locations are planned.

Joe Caccioppoli, who head’s Chorus growth and new business team says the company has seen demand for tracking of “physical assets and environments to help improve efficiency, reduce costs and improve sustainability outcomes”.

“Well placed”

Caccioppoli says as a leading digital infrastructure provider Chorus is well placed to solve the challenges organisations have deploying IoT. He says the company will leverage its existing infrastructure including fibre networks, poles and exchanges.

Chorus is working with the National Narrowband Network Company (NNNCo), an Australian IoT specialist.

2degrees 5G drawing less power thanks to Ericsson Micro Sleep Tx

Ericsson says its technology has allowed 2degrees to cut 5G network energy consumption. The company says its Micro Sleep Tx sends 5G radios into a low-power state when there is reduced network demand.

2degrees started using Micro Sleep Tx in August 2022 at 127 sites. Ericsson says this resulted in an 18 percent reduction in power consumption. A year later the technology was installed in 350 sites. This meant a total saving of 1.1 GWh over 12 months. Today the technology is installed at 630 sites.

Power savings are in three main areas. Modernising baseband equipment lead to a 25 percent reduction in consumption. Software upgrades delivered a five percent reduction while the Cell Sleep Mode meant a 10 percent cut in the power used by radio units.

Mark Callander, 2degrees CEO says: “While reducing site energy consumption, Ericsson and 2degrees ensured no compromise on end-user performance.”

Spark to run with Nokia for 5G RAN

Nokia says Spark has chosen the Finnish telecommunications technology company to expand its 4G and 5G networks. It has also picked Nokia as its preferred 5G Radio Access Network partner to “streamline operations and consolidate its RAN”.

The deal will cover more than 700 sites, Spark operates a total of close to 1500 mobile sites. The deal will see Nokia sell its baseband, remote radio heads, and massive MIMO radios.

Spark network and operations director Renee Mateparae says the next phase of the company’s relationship with Nokia will “See us streamlining our 5G deployments to simplify operations and deliver great 5G experiences for our customers.”

Spark to update Transpower fibre network

Spark will start work this month on what Transpower describes as a ‘refresh’ of its Transgo fibre network. The job will take until 2028 and includes providing services and support for the network.

Transgo connects substations and sites throughout the national electricity grid system. It provides protection signalling and communications services. It is also used for the SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) architecture used for controlling, monitoring and analysing remote devices and processes.

Transpower says the Transgo network means it can look after the grid and run the wholesale electricity market in real time. The grid company uses it to move power from where it is generated to where it is needed. The company says the network needs to function in cases where other communications networks might not.

Spark enterprise and government director Mark Beder says: “Our proposed network architecture for the project offers an innovative solution that is based on our own network design and will be deployed and managed by the same team that will support the TransGO refresh programme, demonstrating our experience and expertise in operating similar network solutions in real-world environments.”

Telecom equipment slump trundles on

Worldwide telecom equipment sales slumped in the second half of 2023 and didn’t get any better in the first half of 2024. Recent research from the Dell’Oro Group shows revenues were down 16 percent year-on-year in the second quarter of 2024, the fourth quarter in a row of double digit decline.

Dell’Oro attributes the slump to excess inventory, weaker demand in China and high uncertainty. There is also the effect of high 5G investments last year in countries like India and China, but as coverage in those places increases, operators have been able to slow their investments.

Downward trends were across all technologies.

Despite the sizable change in volumes, the relative performance of suppliers is largely unchanged. The top seven equipment suppliers account for 80 percent of the total market. They are, in order, Huawei, Nokia, Ericsson, ZTE, Cisco, Ciena, and Samsung.

Dell’Oro notes that Huawei remains strong regardless of the efforts of western nations to blunt its influence.

The research company says it expects the market to remain “challenging” in the immediate future.

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The Download Weekly is supported by Chorus New Zealand.

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Bill Bennett

Freelance journalist.

Auckland-based Bill Bennett writes technology and business stories that are directly relevant to New Zealand readers.

His emphasis is on telecommunications, but he also covers other aspects of technology and business. You can find his features in the New Zealand Herald and hear him regularly on RNZ Nine to Noon and the NZ Tech Podcast.

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