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Vodafone New Zealand

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Vodafone New Zealand is New Zealand's largest mobile phone operator, based in Auckland, New Zealand. The company was formed in 1998, after Vodafone purchased BellSouth's New Zealand operations. The company employs 1,300 people and has operations in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch and has an extensive dealer network across the country.

As of 2005, the company is investing millions of dollars in their new 3G network. Further investments in the 2G network are ongoing to improve capacity in congested urban areas especially. In October 2006, Vodafone bought ihug, New Zealands third largest Internet service provider.

Contents

Background

Market share

At the time of purchase in November 1998, BellSouth had 138,000 customers. As of November 8, 2006, the company had about 2.1 million customers and a market share of 55% [1]. The company's rival is Telecom New Zealand, New Zealand's largest telecommunications company. Telecom has the advantage that they had a 6-year head-start on BellSouth.

After Vodafone took over Bellsouth, they expanded the coverage of the network to compete better with Telecom. It has since been able to compete strongly against Telecom. Vodafone has constantly increased its Market Share and now surpasses Telecom. More recently however, Vodafone has been losing some of its market share back to Telecom due to successful marketing campaigns by Telecom and better pricing for their text messaging service. However the launch of their 3G network, which is the only network in New Zealand capable of video-calling, will potentially attract many more customers back to Vodafone. Despite having a seemingly huge customer base, the number of active customers is lower due to abandoned pre-paid accounts left by tourists.

Coverage

Vodafone operates a GSM mobile phone network, for which they state that "around 97% of New Zealanders live, work and play" within coverage".[2]. Customers can also use GPRS, for picture messaging and internet access, anywhere in GSM coverage. While the network covers the main centres very well, in many rural areas it currently does not provide the level of coverage its main competitor Telecom provides. The latter company states that its network now reaches "more than 97% of the places where Kiwis live and work".[3]

Phone numbers

In New Zealand all mobile phone numbers start with 02. Local number portability was introduced to the New Zealand market with effect from 2nd April 2007, as such the following can only be considered indicative. Vodafone has the 021 prefix for their network, with other mobile networks using various other prefixes (in New Zealand, the network is sometimes referred to in speech by its prefix.) Generally the convention is 9-digit numbers are allocated to postpaidcustomers, whereas longer 10- and 11-digit numbers are allocated to pre-paid customers. The idea is to make the post-paid numbers easier to remember, and to allow for a large number-space for pre-paid customers.

The general rules for Vodafone phone numbers are as follows:

  • 021 0xx xxxx (10-digit pre-paid)
  • 021 02xx xxxx (11-digit pre-paid)
  • 021 1xx xxxx (10-digit pre-paid)
  • 021 2xx xxxx (10-digit pre-paid)
  • 021 3xx xxx (9-digit post-paid)
  • 021 4xx xxx (9-digit post-paid)
  • 021 5xx xxx (9-digit post-paid)
  • 021 6xx xxx (9-digit post-paid)
  • 021 7xx xxx (9-digit post-paid)
  • 021 8xx xxx (9-digit post-paid)
  • 021 9xx xxx (9-digit post-paid)

Assuming all numbers follow the above rule, it can be assumed that there are nearly 3 million possible numbers for pre-paid customers and approximately 700,000 possible numbers for post-paid customers. In total there are approximately 3.7 million possible combinations of phone numbers available to Vodafone, not counting 11-digit combinations (or 4.6 million including the 11-digit combinations).

Telecom New Zealand, Vodafone's main rival, has fixed 10-digit numbers which means they have approximately 10 million possible numbers. Telecom originally had mixed 9-digits and 10-digits number using a different prefix, following the same idea Vodafone is currently using. Telecom later introduced a new prefix with fixed 10-digits to simplify the numbering system.

Vodafone used to operate one extra prefix on behalf of TelstraClear, which is 029. TelstraClear customers used to be able to get mobile numbers under this prefix. Vodafone simply provided the network. Vodafone's pricing plans also considers calls and messages from 021 to 029 customers to be charged at the same rate as 021 to 021 calls and messages -- and vice-versa. In 2007 this agreement lapsed all Telstraclear 029 and 021 connections have reverted back to Vodafone New Zealand ownership, including the 029 prefix.

3G launch

On Wednesday August 10, 2005 Vodafone introduced a brand new 3G network, using the UMTS technology now becoming widespread in Europe. Using this standard, Vodafone now offers video telephony, music downloads, TV downloads including mobisodes (made for mobile phone tv episodes) and much more all from its Vodafone live! portal.

One major disadvantage of this choice of technology is the requirements to use the 2.1GHz frequency band. The existing 2G network, at 900MHz, use a frequency band which allows greater coverage than the 2.1GHz band allows. Thus Vodafone will have to build more sites to provide the same level of coverage as their existing GSM 900MHz network. An UMTS 900 rollout will help to narrow the gap between UMTS and GSM in terms of coverage, however Vodafone has not made public any plans to introduce UMTS at 900MHz.

Also building a UMTS network at 2.1GHz is much more expensive than the upgrade path originally chosen by Telecom, with CDMA2000 and EVDO. Telecom however commissioned Alcatel-Lucent in early 2007 to begin rollout of a UMTS network also, with a view to ultimately migrating all CDMA subscribers onto this network. A third carrier, NZ Communications, is also rolling out a UMTS network. With all three carriers using the same network technology, and number portability, the barriers to subscriber churn will be very low. This should result in greatly increased competition in the NZ market.

Criticism

Vodafone has come under criticism for:

  • The reintroduction of Post Paid (On Account) contracts after scrapping them.
  • Poor coverage with their 3G network, forcing many to fall back to the 2G GSM network. Also complaints about feeding HSDPA cellsites with only single E1 connections have emerged.
  • Questionable claims regarding 'Unlimited' calling with Vodafones @home plan [4]
  • Prepaid only promotions or pricing plans, which significantly reduce the value of post paid pricing plans. [5] [6]
  • Vodafones prolonged billing system outage, labelled the 'Pit Stop' this outage was due to a billing system migration and took weeks to restore. [7]
  • Vodafones limited support in regards to number portability.
  • Vodafones inability to convert prepaid numbers to postpaid and vice versa. This is despite their competitor, Telecom who allows quick and easy changes.
  • Vodafones opposition [8] to Telecoms $1.4 billion dollar investment which would see a move to a FTTN type network. Vodafone and several other internet providers voiced opposition and surprise to a network change that was years in the making [9] [10]. This prompted heated discussion on the popular website Geekzone.
  • Vodafones international roaming issues [11] [12] [13] in Australia during Christmas and the 4th of January. Vodafone NZ and Australia had originally blamed Optus for the outage stating that Optus were unable to provide sufficient international bandwidth. However afterwards, Vodafone admitted that it had not adequately predicted demand for the Christmas period[14].

Additionally, a lot of criticism was laid at the feet of Slingshot, Orcon and Vodafone due to their opposition to Telecoms 1.4 billion dollar investment which would upgrade aspects of the network, bringing more cabinets to improve New Zealands broadband.[15] This was despite reports over a long duration stating that this was what was planned. [16] [17] [18]


News and history:

  • 9th March 2008 - Vodafone is reported to have 900mhz UTMS cellsites active. geekzone forum discussion
  • 7 February 2008 - Vodafone's ihug brand reports significant issues with email where customers were unable to access email, starting at 4AM on the 7th. (ihug message of the day). This was a prolonged outage that affect email services for significant part of the 7th. 
 What’s the problem?
 Some ihug customers may be unable to receive emails at the moment.
 When did the problem start?
 This issue started to occur at 4.05am this morning.
  • 9 February 2008 - Vodafone's ihug brand has significant email issues, where customers using Vodafone's ihug interface are able to access other peoples emails due to them appearing in the users draft and sent items folder. This allegedly lasted for 14 hours. According to Vodafone spokesman Paul Brislen, users would not be able to view the messages, instead only view the headers of the message. (Stuff article by Juha Saarinen)

Local loop unbundling (LLU)

On 3 June 2008, Vodafone released their unbundled product to the public, named Red network. Apart from Kordia (Orcon), Vodafone is the second and only other service provider to be working on an LLU network.

Red network launched with 19 exchanges unbundled. (Vodafone Red network)

ihug

On 10 October 2006, Vodafone successfully bought ihug from iinet, it's previous owner. This subsequently allowed Vodafone to market ihug's services under their own name, and strengthened Vodafone's position in the telecommunications market, being able to provide fixed line home phone, broadband and dial up services.

The New Zealand Herald recently reported that Vodafone will completely shut down the ihug brand, and incorporate all services under the Vodafone brand from April 2008. ihug users will be able to switch to a Vodafone email address or keep their current @ihug.co.nz address.

On the 3rd February 2008, a phishing email was sent to ihug customers asking for their login details. As with all such emails, details should not be entered into the email. (Geekzone thread, ihug message of the day, NZcity article).

On 1 August 2008, ihug Limited was successfully amalgamated into Vodafone New Zealand Limited, becoming Vodafone Fixed Line and Broadband.

Services provided by Vodafone

Plans available



Contacting Vodafone

We have compiled a page of contact details for Vodafone New Zealand.

External links

Retrieved from "http://www.nzconnection.net/Vodafone_New_Zealand"
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