Download Weekly: 5G ubiquitous in NZ by 2030

GSMA report sees 5G everywhere in NZ by 2030

Almost every mobile user in New Zealand will spend most of their time on 5G networks by the end of the decade according to international research conducted by GSMA.

In its Mobile Economy Asia Pacific 2024 report, GSMA says New Zealand will be one of a handful of regional nations that will have ‘near ubiquitous’ 5G adoption by 2030. The other nations are Australia, Japan, Singapore and South Korea.

GSMA singled out New Zealand for special mention saying it will move farthest and fastest towards that goal. Today the 5G penetration rate is 22 percent, which will climb to 95 percent in 2030.

Among regional leaders

For comparison Australia is currently sitting on 45 percent penetration and is heading towards 94 percent. Japan, Singapore and South Korea are at 37, 29 and 40 percent respectively today. They will all climb into the 90s by the end of the decade.

There’s a huge gap between the leading nations and the region as a whole. Across Asia-Pacific 5G penetration is currently at 10 percent and will hit 45 percent in 2030.

The region’s mobile markets are close to saturation. Today there are 1.8 billion mobile subscriptions. That is expected to grow at a compound rate of 2 percent each year to read 2.1 billion in 2030. Mobile internet use for the region is expected to climb at an annual compound rate of 3 percent from today’s 1.4 billion to 1.8 billion in 2030.

GSMA says 30 percent of the region’s population will still be without a mobile subscription in 2030 and 39 percent will be without mobile internet.

GSMA plots wider mobile network value

Mobile Economy Asia Pacific 2024 says: “The mobile industry’s contribution to Asia Pacific’s economy will grow beyond US$1 trillion by 2030”. It says mobile technologies and services was behind 5.3 per cent of GDP in the region last year.

According to the report there are 1.4 billion mobile internet users in the region today, that’s roughly half of all users or in the GSMA’s words a 51 per cent penetration rate. This will rise to 1.8 billion or 62 per cent by 2030.

Meanwhile the report predicts mobile data traffic in Asia Pacific will quadruple between 2023 and 2030.

The GSMA or Global System for Mobile Association, is best known as the organisation behind the Mobile World Congress.

Ericsson bags 2degrees RAN business for next five years

Ericsson will supply 2degrees with radio access network (RAN) technology for the next five years.

The new deal extends an agreement that was originally signed in 2021. At the time Ericsson displaced Huawei as 2degrees’ main equipment supplier in the wake of official concerns about network security under the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Act 2013 (TICSA).

Over the next five years Ericsson will work to upgrade and modernise the 2degrees mobile network. It says this will include products and services from the company’s Radio Systems portfolio, among them: AIR (antenna-integrated radio), basebands, RAN processors, Ericsson Antenna Systems and power systems including Lithium-Ion batteries. It also covered future products including Generator 4 RAN Processors.

In a statement the company says it will have “a focus on 5G deployment nationwide while replacing and enhancing mobile 3G and 4G infrastructure at sites”.

Overseas Investment Office approves Datagrid land buy

The Overseas Investment Office has approved Datagrid’s purchase of an additional 6Ha of land in Makarewa near Invercargill in Southland where it is building a major data centre.

The new purchase takes the site’s total area up to 49 Ha.

In a post on Linkedin Datagrid says the additional land is “essential to enable Datagrid’s vision for a sustainable data center park”. The company is now looking for resource consent and has a Fast Track consenting application under consideration.

Datagrid’s plans include an Artificial Intelligence datacenter powered by up to a Gigawatt of renewable energy. The company is building a new power substation connecting to electricity generated by the Manapouri power station and the Te Waipounamu submarine cable connecting Invercargill to Sydney and Melbourne.

ANZ space programme to include free space optics

MBIE, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment is working with Adelaide-based SmartSat Cooperative Research Centre working on four space research projects including one looking at free space optical communications.

The other projects involve monitoring methane emissions and greenhouse gases, tracking space objects and “developing a joint Australia-New Zealand concept for maritime domain awareness.

Free space optical communications is a technology that uses lasers to directly transmit data between two nodes. It can be between satellites in space, but the term is also used for point to point communications through the air. It can be used as an alternative to fibre but is subject to performance problems if there is rain, fog or dust.

Epson invests in microsatellites

Epson and its venture capital arm Epson X Investment Corporation have invested in Axelspace, a microsatellite start-up.

At the time of writing Axelspace makes and operates microsatellites. It has nine microsatellites in orbit. There is also an Earth observation business that sells satellite imagery and provides analysis and consulting services.

Epson is best-known for its printers and projectors, but has sensing technology that will be used in future satellites.

In other news...

Google u-turns on ditching third-party tracking cookies in Chrome browser

Reporting at Interest.co.nz Juha Saarinen says:

In a surprising change of direction, Google has decided not to get rid of third-party cookie support in Chrome. The cookies are small text files with information, set by websites and advertisers, and can be used to track users across the internet for personalisation and other purposes, some of which violate user privacy.
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Google has chosen to put profit ahead of privacy and user experience, that’s how the tech giant’s surveillance capitalism business model rolls.

Gartner Says Worldwide IaaS Public Cloud Services Revenue Grew 16.2% in 2023

Amazon, of course, remains the market leader by a hefty margin. Its IaaS business is almost twice the size of second place Microsoft’s. Google is a distant third. It’ll be interesting to see how much longer the sector can continue growing at such a clip.

CrowdStrike chaos: What to do on your first day back at work

The Herald’s digital front page teaser puts a different, sharper edged perspective on Chris Keall’s analysis of a tech crisis: “CrowdStrike chaos: Microsoft’s tone-deaf ‘less than 1%’ post”. He writes:

It sounds relatively harmless when you put it like this: “We currently estimate that CrowdStrike’s update affected 8.5 million Windows devices, or less than 1% of all Windows machines,” Microsoft enterprise and OS security head David Weston wrote in a post late yesterday.

But CrowdStrike’s market is big organisations that do important stuff to keep society going, and that “less than 1%” included your bank, your supermarket – and in many cases, especially in the US, their airline, health provider or emergency services too.

America’s space wars are our space wars

I missed this earlier, but it is well worth a read.

Space Force has gone from nothing to being worth $50 billion in a mere five years, and Pennington says New Zealand brings a unique offer to the table.

“We don’t have weapon factories but what we do have is very clear southern skies and because of Rocket Lab we have a proven launch capability,” he says.

The New Zealand tax rule that stops talent staying

My story about the damage the Foreign Investment Fund does to the tech sector ran on Thursday in the NZ Herald and is worth a read if you want to know why entrepreneurs are not landing here in huge numbers.

Sir Paul Callaghan famously talked of making New Zealand the place where talent wants to live.

More than a decade after he called for a national transformation driven by science, technology and evidence-based decision-making, his words continue to influence government and industry thinking. They inspired talented people from around the world, including returning overseas Kiwi entrepreneurs, to consider settling here and establishing forward-looking businesses.

Unfortunately, a major barrier stands between New Zealand and that potential influx of fresh and returning talent: we have an outdated and unusual international tax regime that contradicts our immigration strategy