davidlyon

Arrived AKL Jan 7, went to NZ Telecom at the airport. My Telus iPhone 5 is locked, so I had checked what was available before I left.

I was originally planning to buy a mobile hotspot, since my wife already has a cheap Vodaphone prepaid. A mobile hotspot would have cost $79-99 (NZD for all amounts in this post).

However, when I priced things out, it actually made sense to get a prepaid smartphone with tethering capabilities.

Here is what I got for $164 all inclusive:

Samsung Galaxy Y smartphone
Car charger
Case
Free Telecom calling (1 month)
100 Nationwide minutes
Non-stop texts
3.5 GB data
180 minutes International Talk time (including Canada and US)
180 International texts

I need both phone and internet for business purposes. I have been using the Samsung for over 2 weeks now. It does not replace an iPhone, but it does everything I need while I am away. I do not have to worry about finding an internet cafe before using internet. As well, I don't have to watch the minutes when I am talking on the phone.

I have used about 3 GB of my allotted data, so will probably have to top up once more. That will cost $29 for another 3 GB.

I have used just over an hour of my international talk time, so what I have should suffice until we leave on Jan 31 (barring a last minute flurry of calls).

Note that the data package is a special deal at the moment. Usually, the prepaid data package is $29 for 1.5 GB.

As noted above, I checked before I came in terms of prices. I did it by way of the chat function on the NZ Telecom web site. The price I was given seemed too good to be true, so I had steeled myself for the actual price before I went into the store. Much to my surprise, the final price was cheaper than what I was quoted during my chat.

COVERAGE:

My travels have been restricted to the northern half of the North Island, primarily Orewa, Katikati/Waihi Beach, Hastings and Taupo. I would rate the coverage as very good, better than I had expected. That is not to say we always had a good signal. However, most of the time we did, and getting a signal was not a source of frustration.

For someone who is travelling beyond these areas, it probably makes sense to compare the coverage maps for NZ Telecom and Vodaphone. We found that the coverage we enjoyed was better than what is described in the NZ Telecom map, which I found refreshing.

Incidentally, I am told that a Telus iPhone can be unlocked. However, this apparently involves "wiping" the phone, and there may be a charge for this. It certainly has potential hassles involved. As well, on a previous trip, my wife was assured that the Telus phone she had at the time could be used in Australia and NZ. Her attempts resulted in nothing but frustration, hence the cheap Vodaphone. It may be that others have different options with their carriers, or are sufficiently savvy about cell phones that they can make their existing phones work without undue hassle.

For me, the NZ Telecom option has been ideal. I have not had to worry about coverage, and the service has been very good at a price which is, to me at least, ridiculously low.

Happy travels.

jackal

Anyone know whether Vodafone or Spark (NZ Telecom) has better 3G coverage in rural areas on both islands? Have heard good things about both but which has better coverage, especially in remote towns and along rural roads?

One plus to Vodafone is that they supposedly make 4G LTE available to prepaid customers, which would be nice where it's available. But Spark includes access to NZ Telecom payphone wifi access points, which would be nice (whirlpool.com.au has a user who said this came in handy at rural motels, which often had a payphone out front broadcasting a wifi signal).

Any suggestions as to which I should get?

Kiwi Flyer

3G coverage should be fairly similar on both networks.

The payphone wifi has daily usage limit (1 Gb IIRC).

http://www.vodafone.co.nz/network/coverage/
http://www.spark.co.nz/business/shop...e/network.html

jackal

Thanks!

1GB/day is plenty.

About to board. Been looking forward to this trip for a long time!

ETA (didn't want to bother with a new post yet): pretty seamless process to get a Spark SIM right at the airport near international arrivals. Spark and Vodafone were right next to each other, just across from McDonald's and on the exit out towards the rental cars. Although I don't need talk or text, the pure data-only plan didn't include the hotspot usage, so I went with the 2GB+100 minutes+unlimited domestic texting plan for NZ$49. A bit rich compared to similar plans I've had in other countries, but oh well. (I may top up with more data later.) BTW, I can confirm the hotspot usage allows up to two devices, so it's not just wifi for the phone--that's good.

wco81

How much was the data-only plan?

Maybe T-Mobile Simple Choice covers NZ, perhaps sufficient for light usage?

Be curious if LTE coverage is good but then again, 2 GB is low.

jackal

With Spark: 3GB of data-only was $55 but didn't include any hotspot usage, so I went with the 2GB+some minutes and texts plan for $49, which does include 1GB/day at Spark wifi hotspots. I have not yet seen any LTE connectivity on my phone (iPhone 6 Plus, so it should have the necessary radios for NZ's LTE bands), so I assume the Spark prepaid plan does not give access to LTE. I have seen "4G" pop up, but I would guess that's "4G" like AT&T's "4G" in the US and is really only HSPA+ (which is good enough for all intents and purposes), unless Spark has their network programmed to show "4G" when it's really LTE.

Vodafone's data-only plans are specifically for tablets/USB data sticks only, not phones. I forget what the price was, since I kind of ignored it once I found out they were not for phones.

In looking at the coverage maps linked above by Kiwi Flyer, Spark's 3G network is quite a bit better than Vodafone's. Vodafone has a lot of 2G/2.5G on the South Island and only has 3G in and around the larger cities, whereas Spark shows much better 3G coverage (they show 3G along all the mountain roads and rural towns that Vodafone only has shown as 2G), hence my decision to go with Spark. FWIW, it does look like Vodafone offers better LTE coverage, but I'd rather have more usable 3G than some LTE interspersed with only 2G.

wco81

No I'm pretty sure 4G can be LTE.

I've measured 25-30 Mbps speeds under 4G on my iPad Mini Retina in both Italy and France.

How much are the top up rates? Those prices are already steep though. But if hotel wifi is fast, then it would be tolerable. I've stayed at hotels where I wanted to use mobile data instead of the wifi they offered.

jackal

You might be right. I'm a little hesitant to run a speed test, though, given the limited (and high cost of) data.

ETA: This does seem to indicate that 4G=LTE: http://help.spark.co.nz/app/answers/..._id/26644/~/4g If so, good on them for adhering to official 3GPP definitions of mobile generations!

I don't recall off the top of my head; they're not great, though. I'm sure the prices for both Spark and Vodafone are available on their respective websites.

Ripper3785

Is this the $19 value pack plus the $29 1.5GB data extra? We have a spark SIM from trip last year and we'll need to top up for our trip later this month.

jackal

It's sold as a $49 tourist pack. It may very well be priced out internally as a combination of other packages, but the package you actually buy is labeled as a $49 package including the 2GB+100min+100sms.

I've used 1.6GB and have almost three weeks left in the country...

transparent

Just finished a 10-day trip in NZ traveling around Southland and then Rotorua and Auckland.

Purchased the $29 1.5GB data only SIM with Spark (Telecom). Easy to do right at the airport at the arrivals area. Allows tethering with no problem on iPhone 6.

4G in city centers, like Queenstown, Christchurch, and Auckland, but 3G most other places that are inhabited. If you're in a park or on the road in the mountains, no service... 1.5 GB allllllmost lasted me the whole trip, ran out the day before I was to leave. Probably ran out because I did some tethering and uploaded some photos.

wco81

Hmm, the current Prepaid with Data Wikia shows 750 MB for the $29 starter kit. The only 1.5 GB data is a top up for $29.

Did you guys have any problems with the 850 Mhz band for 3G? Suppose to be unusual band.

Also confusing is the use of 700 Mhz for LTE. It's in the Wiki as LTE Band 28 yet there are different variations of 700 Mhz and they are Bands 13, 17 and 29 in addition to 28.

Also, did you end up using a lot of the telephone Wifi from Spark (Telecom)?


One thing I'm flabbergasted to learn, hotels, at least those in Wellington CBD, charge for Wifi and it's not on a per day or week basis but on the amount of data. For instance CityLife Wellington offers 500 MB of Wifi a day. Other hotels list paid charges. Travelodge offers 100 MB a day. If you spend around $200 USD per night, then it's free wifi, with no mention of limitations. If you stream some TV shows, they would presumably object?

jackal

I don't recall specifics, but I posted my experience from buying a SIM in October/November 2014 upthread if you want to check it out.

According to http://www.apple.com/iphone-6/specs/, my phone has all of the bands you listed, and I had coverage as good as I would have expected to have. FWIW, my Speedtest.net app still shows my speed test from Spark as being the fastest cellular speed test I've ever done (though AT&T is closing in on it). I didn't pay much attention to specific bands I was connecting to, but driving all the way from Cape Reinga to Bluff and back, I certainly had great, solid coverage everywhere I would have expected it.

Definitely, and it worked quite well. It wasn't a super speedy connection by any stretch of the imagination (think: ADSL2-ish speeds, which is probably what the connection was), but it was perfectly serviceable and was often a great option to connect and get work done, especially when hotel wifi was painfully expensive or slow. There were several times I'd take my car and park within eyesight of a telephone booth, pull my laptop out, plug it into the car's cigarette lighter (I have an adapter), and spend an hour or so getting some work done. (I'm sure I looked somewhat suspicious, but no one ever bothered me).

NZ is the worst country in the 70 I've been to that I've encountered with regard to internet and wifi costs and speeds (save speeds in China, though that's a function of the Great Firewall). Yes, it's a long way from the rest of the world to NZ via undersea cable, but there is no excuse for the highway robbery most hotels--most powered by a hotspot portal provided by Zenbu--charge, since actual data costs to residences and business around NZ have dropped tremendously in the last few years since new fiber cables have arrived in NZ. Zenbu is evil personified and has a true racket going on in NZ, but for whatever reason, hotels won't dump Zenbu and we consumers are stuck with their crappy ultra-limited product.

I spent most of the month looking for opportunities to back up my iPhone to iCloud, and it was painful. I deliberately had to keep my iPhone's wifi turned off to avoid an automatic nightly backup attempt from using up all of my data allowance with each hotel I stayed at--not that the backup attempt would ever succeed, because the ~0.5mbps upload was never enough to complete the backup without timing out. I was excited to discover a great symmetric fiber connection in Hamilton--only to have my hopes dashed when the voucher the front desk provided me only allowed for 500MB--less than what I needed to back up one 1-minute video taken of NZ's amazing scenery.

I recall one motel owner who had to be north of 70 years old (somewhere near Invercargill, IIRC), who handed me a voucher for 100MB and said, "I don't know anything about the Internet, but this should be enough, I think, right?" Of course, some other motel owner near Picton or something gave me a voucher for 1GB on a connection that could barely push 256kbps or something, so there seemed to be no rhyme or reason (and AFAIK, motel owners don't pay Zenbu anything, so they should be able to give whatever size voucher they want out--so there is no reason to limit it to paltry amounts other than ignorance).

Much more on the state of internet access in hotels in NZ in this informative article (comments section in the article provides some more recent updates): http://toomanyadapters.com/the-state...n-new-zealand/

wco81

Wow, it sounds like going back to the days of metered dialup, like the early '90s in the US.

OK, I guess I'll look at maximizing mobile data top ups. Spark website is down this weekend so we'll see.

Maybe there will be promotions for their summer.

jackal

Yeah. The problem, though, isn't the telcos, anymore, at least. The cost of data transit to NZ has fallen sharply--so much so that Spark and other ISPs (Slingshot, etc.) now offer fairly reasonable unlimited usage plans (here, for example). Fiber is apparently making some serious inroads into NZ, but even among the large swaths of the country that only have ADSL connections on offer, data is not a scarce commodity any longer, as the cost of unlimited-usage connections has fallen drastically.

However, Zenbu seems not to know about this. Their data prices have (AFAIK) remained the same since they launched in 2007--an absolutely ridiculous $10 per 100MB. That's $100 per GB!

And of course, as a hotspot provider, they don't actually incur any ongoing expenses for data themselves--data isn't routed through their networks, and business owners incur all costs of data transit. They do exactly one thing: sell preconfigured Linksys router/access points running a customized firmware for NZ$250 to business owners who don't know how to set up their own hotspots. That's it--nothing else. They ship the router to the business owner, who plugs it into their existing Spark/Slingshot/whatever plan that they pay for directly (Zenbu has no part in this), and turn it on. Zenbu lets business owners then give out voucher codes for a particular amount of data (no charge to the business owner), or users can purchase credit for data usage through the hotspot portal, and the hotspot owner keeps a share of that.

What really stinks is that probably 3/4 of the hotels and motels I stayed at in NZ have Zenbu-powered wifi hotspots. Even though most of these lodging places give away vouchers for free wifi (and so Zenbu isn't earning anything from these motels having their devices in their properties), the default data amounts that Zenbu suggests to business owners is paltry--quite often, it was 100MB, which is barely enough for a few hours of work or even half an hour of scrolling through a Facebook feed.

This, of course, creates an artificial data scarcity, because businesses are increasingly getting access to fast, unlimited data connections for reasonable prices. In the days when a 3Mbps connection was fast and you had 50 or 100 people all trying to use it at once, making people pay 10 cents a megabyte was an effective way to deter too much use. These days, with 10Mbps and 100Mbps connections becoming available, even in NZ, if you say that 100MB is enough for someone staying overnight in your property, then you might as well not even advertise that you offer free wifi.

My assumption has to be that these devices are ubiquitous among NZ hotels simply because Zenbu has a near-monopoly on the NZ market of preconfigured hotspot routers and does a good job of advertising their services to the hospitality industry in NZ.

I am hopeful that someone else will step up and provide something to the NZ hospitality industry in a way that breaks Zenbu's hold on the hotspot market. I actually did run into one competing hotspot network at one or two motels I stayed at that had a MUCH more reasonable usage cost, but I only saw that one or two nights out of the month I spent in NZ.

Heck, I could buy professional-quality Mikrotik Routerboards for probably NZ$70 wholesale and sell them at a 100% markup, which would still be half of what Zenbu charges for their crappy Linksys routers. I'd set them up with built-in QoS and per-user queues to prevent one user from hogging the entire connection and of course no ongoing subscription fees for hotspot users. Win-win: users get an adequate amount of usage and business owners get a rock-solid reliable product at a bargain price and are able to service all of their customers.

Sorry for the long-winded rant here, but after seeing first-hand how widespread Zenbu is across the country and then finding out how Zenbu works and makes money, I can't stand idly by and let Zenbu continue raking visitors (AND traveling NZ residents!) over the coals with a false scarcity of data and over-the-top expensive plans to get barely adequate amounts of usage.

For my part, whenever I stayed in a hotel with Zenbu, I left a review of the hotel and specifically mentioned that they used Zenbu and did not provide an adequate amount of data usage. Perhaps that has a small chance of affecting guests' choices of where to stay, and if hospitality industry managers and owners start hearing from a few folks that they chose a different property because they heard that it had better, less limited wifi, then maybe things will change.

A couple of links:

http://www.zenbu.net.nz/faq.php -- you can see the relationship between Zenbu and business owners here
http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp...&TopicId=13954 -- an early discussion with the owner of Zenbu from not too long after Zenbu was founded explaining their cost rationale, which kinda sorta made sense then but it's been 8 years and data costs have fallen tremendously