New Zealand’s mobile operators Spark, Vodafone and 2degrees jointly deployed 20 towers as part of a collaboration between the operators and Crown Infrastructure Partners (CIP) to build broadband and mobile services in rural locations across the country.

CIP contracted the Rural Connectivity Group (RCG), a joint venture between the three operators, to build, operate and maintain rural network infrastructure. Services are now available over the RCG network to customers of Spark, Vodafone or 2degrees.

The 20 sites, the first wave of more than 500 planned, will provide high-speed wireless broadband and mobile coverage to around 1,600 rural homes and businesses, across 70 kms of state highway and to 13 tourist sites.

The government via CIP contracted the RCG to be the infrastructure provider to bring mobile and wireless broadband coverage to rural New Zealand under the Rural Broadband Initiative 2 (RBI2) and the Mobile Black Spot fund.

Once the project is complete it aims to deliver coverage to at least 38,000 rural homes and businesses. It will also provide mobile coverage to 1,200 kms of state highways and provide connectivity to at least 152 tourist destinations by December 2022.

The RCG network uses Nokia’s 4G multi-operator core equipment which was deployed on the three operators’ networks. The technology allows the RCG to deploy one RAN to connect to the operators’ three different core networks.