WombatNET’s Alex Stewart expands on his 2nd Jun Herald NOW interview: infrastructure dependency stacking, spectrum constraints on local WISPs, and the TDL funding question.
RNZ Midday Rural News on Starlink and rural broadband. Background on the structural risk, the policy context, and what’s at stake for rural New Zealand.
Spectrum allocated asymmetrically. Direct-to-Cell consolidation across mobile carriers. A national security gap at GCSB and NZDF. Ministerial advice withheld under s9(2)(f)(iv). Part 3 sets out the structural decisions that closed off the rural market.
The Commerce Commission’s independent expert warned of LEO satellite monopoly risk in October 2025. MBIE internal documents from May 2024 described the same market as a monopoly while the formal OIA response said no analysis existed. Part 2 sets out what was known and when.
In 2019, I visited a rural community that had been begging for better access to connectivity for years. The big telcos had looked at the area, done the math on how many customers they could sign up, and walked away. The community was told they’d need to raise a few hundred thousand dollars themselves before […]