Spark New Zealand announced that it has made timely mobile capacity upgrades to over 250 holiday spots around the country to cope with the expected surge in network traffic over the festive season. The upgrades cover key holiday spots, including Coromandel, the Bay of Plenty, East Coast beaches, the Waikato, the lakes of central North Island, and popular South Island holiday areas such as the Queenstown Lakes and Wanaka regions and the Nelson and Blenheim areas.
According to a statement by Spark, it has also powered up around 80 brand new 4G mobile sites on both the 700MHz and 1800MHz radio spectrums for the anticipated spike in traffic during Christmas. The operator is also using mobile cell-sites at key locations and special events to give locals and holiday-makers better access to mobile data throughout summer.
In addition, Spark has also installed portable mobile sites in key holiday locations and at many of the special events and concerts taking place over the holidays, including at Rhythm & Vines, and Rhythm & Alps, where Spark is teaming up with global music giant Spotify to bring festival goers access to the world’s best festival tech on their wrists.
David Havercroft, COO, Spark Connect
We are seeing a big change in consumer behaviour as more and more customers are using smartphones in new and innovative ways. This is particularly noticeable in the holiday season. Last year some parts of the Spark Network saw 500 percent increases in data uploaded than the year before. Rather than sending the odd ‘happy new year’ text, many customers are now uploading data rich content like photos and videos and using mobile and social media apps instead of texting or calling. Better access to mobile data makes it faster and easier for customers to do the things they already love to do on their smartphones such as watching videos, streaming music on the go or uploading photos to social media, whether they’re at the beach or minding the sausages on the BBQ. While it’s not always easy to cater for some of the extreme and seasonal spikes in demand that can occur in relatively remote locations, we’ve been investing tens of millions of dollars and working hard upgrading capacity to help keep customers connected all summer long - and help New Zealanders share that perfect selfie of themselves on New Year’s Eve.
