\tSpark New Zealand extended commercial 5G service to selected areas of five additional South Island towns and communities, using the 2600MHz band and equipment from Nokia.<\/p>\n
The operator, which in late September turned on 5G service in Alexandra [1] for a limited number of enterprise and consumer customers, said its network is now live in parts of Westport, Clyde, Twizel, Tekapo and Hokitika.<\/p>\n
Spark introduced a flexible price plan, 5G Discover, which allows customers to pay less if they use less, starting at NZD75 ($48.18) up to a maximum NZD95 for 600GB of data per month.<\/p>\n
Mark Beder, technology director, said many people are interested in wireless broadband as a service, but some are put off by the previous data caps. \u201cThe much higher data cap on 5G opens up an attractive proposition for more customers, as it can offer fibre-like speeds in places with no or limited fibre coverage.\u201d<\/p>\n
Last week, the operator announced it shifted to a multi-vendor strategy [2] for its 5G radio access network and confirmed Nokia, Samsung and Huawei as preferred equipment suppliers.<\/p>\n
Beder noted it would prefer to use C-band (3500MHz) as it believes this will be the primary spectrum band for mass deployment of 5G: \u201cAcquiring enough C-band spectrum is an important requirement for all wireless network operators. As the spectrum is released we’ll be bringing more services, which we\u2019ll roll out over time.\u201d<\/p>\n[1] https:\/\/www.mobileworldlive.com\/asia\/asia-news\/spark-vodafone-nz-introduce-5g-service\/
\n[2] https:\/\/www.mobileworldlive.com\/asia\/asia-news\/new-zealands-spark-goes-multi-vendor-for-5g\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Spark New Zealand extended commercial 5G service to selected areas of five additional South Island …<\/p>\n
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