A call by New Zealand wholesale operator Chorus for a 5G network to be shared using the same model as the country’s ultra-fast broadband (UFB) network drew sharp criticism from the country’s two largest mobile operators – Vodafone New Zealand and Spark.

Spark MD Simon Moutter said in a statement the suggestion is entirely self-serving and not in the interests of consumers who have “benefited from competition between three mobile network providers in respect of 3G and 4G services”.

Moutter added he saw no reason “why the same should not apply to the next generation of 5G.”

The New Zealand Herald reported Vodafone as saying: “The conditions that led to the UFB model – a vertically integrated incumbent and a lack of high-speed broadband – simply do not exist in New Zealand’s mobile market.”

Unsustainable
Chorus CEO Kate McKenzie told the National Business Review (NBR) there is a strong argument for having a shared, regulated, backbone following the government’s policy approach to UFB.

“The amount of capital that’s going to have to be spent to build those [5G] networks for a country of this size and this population, with small cells every couple of hundred metres – if three people [operators] do that, that’s insane. That’s just not going to be sustainable,” she said.

McKenzie conceded competitors could see its position as an attempt to slow down and control the rollout of 5G to maximize the returns on its investment in the UFB, which won about 70 per cent of the rollout work, NBR said.

However, Moutter argued: “A monopoly is and always should be the last resort option for a market, not the first as Chorus is proposing. And any suggestion that taxpayers should be asked to pay for a 5G monopoly in our country is ludicrous.”

He said Spark’s plans for 5G are already progressing. The company trialled 5G in late 2016 in conjunction with Victoria University, achieving mean download speeds of up to 3Gb/s.

“Although Spark is not yet in a position to provide definite time frames, it expects to start rolling out 5G within the next few years,” Moutter said