Vodafone New Zealand

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Vodafone NZ pre-STK (pre-'SIM2') SIM card, circa 2002 compared with 1996 5¢ coin.

Vodafone New Zealand is New Zealand's largest mobile-operator, based in Auckland. 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. In October 2006, Vodafone bought ihug, New Zealands 3rd largest Internet service provider.

1 Market Share
2 Coverage
3 Phone Numbers
4 3G Launch
5 See also
6 External links

[edit] 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-years 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.

[edit] 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]

[edit] Phone Numbers

In New Zealand all mobile phone numbers starts with 02. Vodafone has the 021 prefix for their network, with other mobile networks using various other prefixes. Generally the convention is 9-digit numbers are allocated to post-paid customers, 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 [4] for Vodafone phone numbers are as follows:[5]

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.

Vodafone also operates one extra prefix on behalf of TelstraClear, which is 029. Only TelstraClear customers can get mobile numbers under this prefix, since it belongs to TelstraClear. Vodafone simply provides 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.

[edit] 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 exisiting 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 exisiting GSM 900MHz network.

Also building a UMTS network at 2.1GHz is much more expensive than the upgrade path chosen by Telecom. Telecom's upgrade path to 3G CDMA requires only software updates and, in some cases, minimal hardware replacements. Vodafone, on the other hand, has had to purchase new antennas specially for the 2.1GHz frequency band and purchase new base station equipment specially for UMTS.