Video © Herald NOW (NZME), broadcast 2 June 2026.

A big thanks to Garth Bray and the Herald NOW team for giving this important issue airtime today. A live segment runs for only a few minutes, and a couple of things briefly raised in it are worth unpacking a bit further.

Garth pointed out that Starlink backs up many mobile cell sites, which people may not realise. In rural communities where local wireless providers have already closed or don’t exist, the picture can look something like this.

– The businesses, farms, and homes are on Starlink.

– The cell tower serving those homes has a Starlink feed.

– The school, which doubles as the community civil defence emergency hub, is on Starlink.

– And since late 2024, mobile coverage filling the gaps in cell service and providing backup during emergencies has been running through Starlink’s Direct-to-Cell offering as well.

Each of these layers now runs on the same platform, and at each layer, the alternatives are shrinking.

If something goes wrong with that platform and there is no domestic alternative, what does the community do? Who do they call? The service they depend on sits entirely outside New Zealand’s jurisdiction or control.

On the regulatory front, this is where I often lose people because it starts to get rather technical, but it’s actually the most important piece of the puzzle for local operators like WombatNET.

Starlink transmits to its New Zealand users under historical international spectrum (blocks of radio waves) arrangements that require no licence applications or payments to the Crown by the operator.

However, local and regional wireless providers are bound by strict, limiting spectrum-access requirements, meaning they cannot access the airwaves that would enable them to be genuinely competitive, even if they were prepared to pay for them.

That experience is a large part of why I am speaking out. At every turn, the feedback has been that we need to compete harder on performance.

But the physical tools that would allow us to do that require relatively basic regulatory decisions that have not been made, meaning those very tools remain illegal to use.

In 2025, the industry put forward a proof-of-concept trial at its own expense to remove cost as an objection. The answer was still no. There is no path out of that loop from inside it.

Without having access to millions to throw at behind-closed-door lobbying, I know that deepening public understanding is the only lever that remains, and that is what compelled me to do what I have done.

I am not being cynical when I say there is not much time left to act. This is the on-the-ground reality, and not only my own.

So, when people compare local and satellite offerings, they are not comparing equals. Because that context is complicated, it tends to get left out of the conversation.

On the Telecommunications Development Levy: that funding was originally intended for rural connectivity investment. This government term, none of it has been directed to rural broadband. The Minister was asked what the plans were for it and declined to answer.

The full evidence base is within the three-part series linked below. 28 OIA requests across 18 government agencies established that the analysis of rural satellite dependency largely does not exist, and where it does, it has been almost entirely withheld.

• The Rural Blind Spot, Part 1: Nobody Checked
• The Rural Blind Spot, Part 2: They Were Warned
• The Rural Blind Spot, Part 3: In Confidence

Read the 2025 Report on Telecommunications Regulation in New Zealand, by Richard Feasey