RNZ National’s Nine to Noon aired a segment on 22 June 2026 about rural broadband, Starlink, and local providers now at risk of closure. It featured Mark Hooper, telecommunications spokesperson for Federated Farmers, alongside myself. Audio © Kathryn Ryan, Alex Stewart, Mark Hooper, RNZ National, Nine to Noon, 22 June 2026. Source: rnz.co.nz. – This […]
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.
Between October 2025 and March 2026, 28 OIA requests went to 18 government agencies asking what analysis had been done on rural broadband monopoly risk. Sixteen of twenty-one core questions returned “information does not exist.” Part 1 documents the analytical vacuum.
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 […]